winning chess series by yasser seirawan


I don't think you can go wrong with Seirawan's books - at least based on the two I have.
Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics, Martin Weteschnik's Check Tactics from Scratch, and Dan Heisman's Back to Basics: Tactics are the three modern tactics books I have and each one has it's pluses and minuses. Seirawan's book has fewer structured summaries or reinforcement-for-learning points but his explanations are more extensive and he provides 137 thematic test puzzles. Heisman has around 300 tactics puzzles to solve is less extensive in explanations than others, but provides more detailed summaries and maxims to help remember the tactics. Weteschnik has no tactics puzzles, but is fairly expansive in explanations and has a lot of structured summaries, etc.
I have both Seirawan's Winning Chess Strategies and Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess, 4th. Ed. While Silman's book is twice as big and much more extensive, Seirawan's book is to-the-point and a lot easier to remember.