In Defense of Elitism by William A. Henry
Reviews are available at Amazon
P.J. O’Rourke is great. So is Ann Coulter (though the more sensative mistake her unwavering un-political correctness for outright racism). Jonah Goldberg is almost as good as P.J. A little less witty but a bit more serious. Mona Charen is another.
If you want the best explanation of early conservative thought read Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke.
The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater.
I’ll third the recommendation for Hayek, as well.
And for one conservative perspective of feminism, read The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers.
Perhaps The Shadow University, by Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silvergate.
For welfare policy -The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky and The Dream and the Nightmare by Myron Magnet.
For Affirmative action and race Losing the Race by John McWhorter and ** The content of our character** by Shelby Steele.
For economics** Free to Choose** by Milton Friedman and http://www.jim.com/seen.htm by Bastiat
This http://www.city-journal.org/ is a great magazine of conservative thought.
the one Taylor Caldwell to remain in print- CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS. If you can find them, her novel on Cicero - A PILLAR OF IRON; Luke- DEAR AND GLORIOUS PHYSICIAN; and her last two novels BRIGHT FLOWS THE RIVER and ANSWER AS A MAN.
Non-fiction: Dennis Prager’s THINK A SECOND TIME
Antony Sutton WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION;
WALL ST & FDR; WALL ST. AND THE RISE OF HITLER;
Rose Wilder Lane THE DISCOVERY OF FREEDOM;
I wish there was a good reliable primer on the Eastern Establishment/Corporate Internationalist organizations that
didn’t veer into paranoid extremism. Alas, the best I can do is
recommend John Birch literature on the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, & the Bildeberg Conferences- believe it or not, the JBS actually is more moderate than a lot of other Rightist literature on the subject.
I’ve always found Rush Limbaugh’s first book, “The Way Things Ought to Be” to do an excellent job of explaining and arguing for the conservative side.
Skip his second book, though. That one just comes off sounding bitter.
Just make sure you get the version with all the mistakes annotated. 
I wholeheartedly disagree.
The “no books by people whose primary day job is TV/radio punditry” rule will serve you well. Not only will you manage to avoid books by Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly and Coulter, but you’ll also manage to avoid books by Carville and Begala. You can’t miss.
(N.B.: I would recommend Chris Matthews’ book Hardball, but that does NOT break the pundit rule as it was written nearly a decade before Matthews became a full-time pundit. And it’s neither conservative nor liberal – it’s a course in how politics is played in Washington, sort of a modern-day version of Machiavelli’s The Prince.)
Try The Terrible Truth About Liberals by Neal Boortz. He’s a Libertarian, it’s a fairly short book, and I found it very interesting.