In the market for a new camera - thoughts?

Okay, folks, I’m in the market for a new camera, and I’m looking for advice and suggestions.

A little background: Way back in the mists of time when I was a reporter, I used a bells-and-whistles camera, plus my husband at the time was a great photographer and we had a proper camera. But over the years, I’ve moved to point-and-shoot (and digital, natch). Now I want to get back to real photography again…but I’ve forgotten a lot.

So the questions of “What do I want?” is hard to answer.

Here’s what I want to use the camera for:

1. concerts. I need to be able to shoot decent pictures without flash, and the camera needs to take pictures quickly with little down time. Concerts mean I’d need a camera without removable lenses.
2. book covers. I need to be able to take reasonably high quality photos for covers (300 dpi for print covers).
3. travel. I want to take nice pictures when we travel. The camera doesn’t need to be waterproof, but reasonably light, small, and hardy are pluses. Extra lenses might be too bulky for motorcycle travel, so again, I’m probably looking for one w/o removable lenses.

I like the idea of having one that has point-and-shoot capability as well as all the manual controls.

I’m somewhat flexible on cost. This is an investment and I’m not necessarily looking for the cheapest camera; however, I want to find a balance between quality/functionality vs. break-the-bank/more features than I’ll ever use. So far, $500 doesn’t scare me; more than that and I’ll have to be convinced the cost is worth the added features.

Thoughts, suggestions, recommendations? Feel free to ask me questions to help me refine what I’m looking for! And thank you!

(And please leave comments here rather than FB/Twitter/G+…that way I don’t have to look four places to compare everyone’s suggestions. Thanks!)


Update 2/20/12: I think I've narrowed it down to the Canon S100, the Sony HX100V, and the Sony HX9V. Which is not to say that I'm still not completely waffling…see the comments for more!