Mary Boas.

[xocetaceans]

1. That's an interesting bit of history regarding that particular author.

Kreysig does not look bad.
Boas is not a bad book, though.
Arfken can be avoided.

If you want to look at an older pair of books (for fun), take a look at Morse and Feshbach, Methods of Theoretical Physics - Part I and Part II.

There's also Courant and Hilbert: Methods of Mathematical Physics - Vol. I and Vol. II.

These two sets of books are fun to look through. They might not align with the purpose of a review, though.

I'd be a little concerned with a master's degree program (if it were in physics) that has not already significantly addressed applied math. Anyone taking a physics master's degree would have already completed a mathematical methods course at the level (at least) of Boas. Special topics courses usually align with Ph.D. programs more directly; i.e., Lie groups, representation theory, etc.

Of course, places and degree requirements vary, so my comments might not even remotely apply outside of physics. Regardless, Morse and Feshbach is encyclopedic in nature and would be worth considering as a reference or even for its historical value. (Or just for fun....)