Patrick Siarry 
Heuristics [PDF ebook] 
Theory and Applications

Many advances have recently been made in metaheuristic methods, from theory to applications. The community of researchers claiming the relevance of their work to the field of metaheuristics is growing faster and faster, despite the fact that the term itself has not been precisely defined. This book discusses theoretical developments in metaheuristics, adaptation of discrete metaheuristics to continuous optimization, performance comparisons of metaheuristics, cooperative methods combining different approaches, parallel and distributed metaheuristics for multiobjective optimization, software implementations, and real-world applications.