Hi Matt, and welcome (I'm new here too).
Whilst not necessarily a beginners book, Hartungs Astronomical Objects for Southern Telescopes (Cambridge University Press) is a very comprehensive reference organised by constellation.
Once you know what constellations are visible (using any of the excellent resources listed in the previous posts) on any given date you can look up that section and get descriptions of a wide variety of objects.
The selection usually includes objects suitable for viewing in scopes down to 70mm aperture as well as much larger ones.
I find it indispensable for planning a night out.
Some planetarium software that is very easy to drive is CyberSky (
http://www.cybersky.com/) the evaluation version has a limited number of objects but is still very useful for finding the planets and brighter deep sky objects.
V.