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Locally we are doing a year long project on beans and would like to recommend lots of good bean cookbooks.

What are your favorites?

Two we know of that are good are:

Fagioli

The Great Vegan Bean  Book

Sharon

The Instant Bean by Sally and Martin Stone has a variety of recipe types, most of which call for canned beans, but obviously can be used with beans cooked from scratch. Handy resource to have if you cook big batches and freeze some. Not all the recipes are vegetarian. We've liked everything I've cooked from it.

Calypso Bean Soup and Other Savory Recipes by Lesa Heebner focuses on heirloom beans with recipes of a Southwestern flavor. Mostly vegetarian. There is a handy substitution chart in the front of the book to simplify subing more available beans for hierloom beans. Some really good soups and stews.

Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian has 122 pages on dried beans of quite a variety and different ethnicities, as well as other recipes for fresh beans. Overall, an excellent book, with lots of good vegetable recipes.

All three of these books are indexed. Used copies are available quite inexpensively from Amazon or abebooks.com.

I strongly second kkillebrew's suggestion of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Wonderful lentil recipes. You can't go wrong with Deborah Madison. Her other books are also very good. I'm partial to some of the bean recipes in The Savory Way.

Consider posting about your group's adventures in the bean world. It would be interesting to see what people think about recipes from different sources.

One other excellent book with outstanding bean recipes is Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style by Viana La Place. It is indexed as well.

One of my favorites is "Heirloom Beans" by Steve Sando 

http://www.eatyourbooks....-beans-great-recipes-for

It has recipes for heirloom varieties that allows their unique flavors and colors to shine. One of the only places you will find recipes for tepary beans, good mother Stallard beans, Swedish brown beans, and dry scarlet runner beans (and many more heirlooms) all in the same place.

A related book is "The Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Grower's Guide", also by Steve Sando.

http://www.eatyourbooks....ordo-heirloom-bean 

It only has a few recipes but it includes information on 50 heirloom varieties, with suggestions on how to use them in your cooking. Most of them (but not all) are tricky fo find in the supermarket (unless you buy the Rancho Gordo brand or buy on the internet), but since I grow my own heirloom beans this one is quite useful for me. I'm not sure what your project entails, but this might be a good resource to show some of the great diversity in the bean family. 

They are both indexed and have lovely color photographs.

Another book I use is "366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans and Grains" by Andrea Chesman (also indexed). http://www.eatyourbooks....cious-ways-to-cook 

The recipes in this one are pretty standard, calling for everyday beans anyone can find in the supermarket, but it's nice to have so many bean recipe options gathered in one place. My favorite recipe from this one is the "White bean chili verde" - I had some incredibly productive tomatillos in the garden last year, and this is a very tasty way to work through those many pints in the freezer. :)

Pulse by Jenny Chandler is wonderful and as it says on the cover is full of "modern recipes for beans, chickpeas and lentils to temp meat-eaters and vegetarians alike"