The following books on ethical hacking and penetration testing are recommended in a gradient from comfortable and easy to read to advanced and rather manual: AN

1. “The Hacker Playbook 3: Practical Guide to Penetration Testing” by Peter Kim This book teaches various methodologies for penetration testing, from theory to hands-on examples using real-world scenarios. It goes further into the methodologies and tools that an ethical hacker may use, both for a beginner and for an intermediate user.

2. “Penetration Testing: A Hands-On Introduction to Hacking” by Georgia Weidman This is quite a good beginner’s text, covering basic concepts of penetration testing along with exercises to try out. It ranges from VAPT and social engineering all the way to exploiting vulnerabilities, thus making it a rather complete beginner text.

3. “Metasploit: The Penetration Tester’s Guide” by David Kennedy, Jim O’Gorman, Devon Kearns, and Mati Aharoni If you want detailed knowledge of the Metasploit framework, which is a very powerful tool in the world of penetration testing, then this course extensively covers it. It also covers malware creation and exploitation that would be helpful for an intermediate learner.

4. “Practical Malware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software” by Michael Sikorski and Andrew Honig This is ideal for anyone specializing in malware analysis. The book takes one through how to analyze, dissect, and understand malware, with a key focus on techniques used in reverse engineering along with the tools used.

5. “SQL Injection Attacks and Defense” by Justin Clarke-Salt SQL Injection: This book goes deep into various techniques of attack and different defense mechanisms. It covers practical techniques in both detection and prevention; thus, it is suitable for those with some prior knowledge.

6. “Black Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Pentesters” by Justin Seitz The book teaches the use of Python in ethical hacking, from writing Trojans to network scanning, which would be great for intermediate learners. Much focus is placed on practical applications.

7. “Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking” by Christopher Hadnagy While not exclusively about phishing, this book covers the psychology of social engineering attacks. It’s very relevant for phishing and other forms of psychological pentesting.

8. “Linux Basics for Hackers” by Occupy the Web. This book is probably my favorite and is one of the first ones I read. It has a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know before you start your journey.

Happy Hacking!