I have seen several books one KDE and at least one on Gnome. But they are way behind the times. I think online is the only to go if someone has a tutorial for the windows manager you decide to go with. I found the following:

http://developer.gnome.org/doc/tutorials/gnome-libs/
http://writelinux.com/glade/index.php
http://perso.wanadoo.es/antlarr/tutorial.html