Good Books on Cryptography 

The Handbook of Applied Cryptography is one of the best technical references available, concise to the point no proofs but lots of references. This book provides what is probably the best, up to date survey of the field of cryptography. This book is available here   

"The purpose of this book is to  introduce the reader  to arithmetic topics, both ancient and modern, that have been at the center of interest in applications of number theory, particularly cryptography. As such, no background in algebra or number theory is assumed, and the book begins with a discussion of the basic number theory that is needed. The approach taken is algorithmic, emphasizing estimates of the efficiency of the techniques that arise from the theory, and one special feature is the inclusion of recent applications of the theory of elliptic curves .Extensive exercises and careful answers have been included in all of the chapters"

....as per the back cover of the book. I think  an introduction to abstract algebra and number theory would make your journey easier. If you have mathematical maturity ..that would come in handy.

Algebraic aspects of cryptography   Neal Koblitz.

Another good text book from Koblitz .A bit more advanced than his previous book on number theory and cryptography .The appendix of the book is the introduction to hyper elliptic curves .

Foundations of Cryptography(Basic Tools) Oded Goldreich  Cambridge 2001

  A book from the computational complexity view if things This book presents a rigorous and systematic treatment of the foundational issues: defining cryptographic tasks and solving new cryptographic problems using existing tools. It focuses on the basic mathematical tools: computational difficulty , pseudorandom ness and zero-knowledge proofs. Rather than describing ad-hoc approaches, this book emphasizes the clarification of fundamental concepts and the demonstration of the feasibility of solving cryptographic problems. This book is available here   

Modern Cryptography, Probabilistic Proofs and Pseudorandomness Oded Goldreich ,Springer-Verlag 1998

This book offers an introduction and extensive survey to each of the three areas mentioned above ,namely Modern Cryptography,Probabilistic Proofs and Pseudorandomness .Some amount of overlap between two books. You can know more about this book here 

Pseudorandomness and Cryptographic Application   Michael Luby  Princeton University 1996.

The Book  offers an insight into pseudorandomness and cryptography .The three books belong to the similar thought school.

Cryptography and Network Security is an introductory text and a reference for actual implementations. It covers both conventional and public-key cryptography . It also covers web security, as in Kerberos, PGP, S/MIME, and SSL. It covers real ciphers and real systems using ciphers. Might be a bit buggy .The website for the book has more material 

Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C,  by Bruce Schneier.

Applied Cryptography collects in one place many academic and popular cipher "algorithms" and protocols. A cook book introduction to cryptography .Though it contains extensive references .First edition had its share of errors. Most ciphers have significant weaknesses when not properly applied, and application issues are not well addressed here. A popular favorite.

 

Cryptography: Theory and Practice, by Douglas R. Stinson. First Edition

Text book style approach ,good one for a courses in cryptography.

 

Cryptography: Theory and Practice, by Douglas R. Stinson. Second Edition First Volume

The second edition of the book is going to come in two parts

The first author of Cryptography: A New Dimension in Computer Data Security, was one of the designers of DES. The book is directed toward DES, but has a sections on network security, key generation, distribution and management. Considered by many as very good though a bit dated . 

 

Contemporary Cryptology : The Science of Information Integrity, by Gustavus J. Simmons (Editor)

Contemporary Cryptology, is a collection by various authors. ,Contemporary when it was written  We have Rueppel on Stream Ciphers, Diffie on the history of Public Key Cryptography, and Simmons on Authentication. We also have various other articles, including ones DES, Public Key Crypto, Cryptanalysis, and Protocol Failures. 

Algorithmic Number Theory, vol. 1: Efficient Algorithms  Erich Bach and Jeffrey Shallit, MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0-262-02405-5.

Public-Key Cryptography Arto Salomaa,  second edition, Springer, 1996. ISBN 3-540-61356-0.

Codes and Cryptography, by Dominic Welsh. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1988. 257 p

Cryptography and Data Security by Dorothy Denning Good book dated and out of print

Primality and Cryptography Evangelos Kranakis,John Wiley & Sons, 1987