Could you recommend a good book about evolution and mass extinctions?

Before I go rummaging around a bookstore blindly, do you know of any books that would be a must buy on the above mentioned topics? I'm already aware of the works by Darwin but I was thinking of something far more recent. Preferably something about how the original creatures came to be, what they were, when/how they became extinct, their relation to the next generation of creatures, their deaths and so on until this generation of life. I'm quite interested in learning about this but it would be nice to come up with a better response when people tell me "if evolution is real why isn't it still happening today?"