Hm, hard to agree with a lot of these being "little-known", but...
I nominate the following. Despite being compiled/edited by a dingus, it has a lot of interesting material from some very good players indeed (it's also where I first came across that unbelievable Kavalek B vs 2 R's game):
I also found this quite good (way back when):
I can't believe people are adding Pandolfini and Keene books to the thread!
Hey, I said the guy was a dink (but the book isn't actually by him, and it's very good indeed).
Hey, I said the guy was a dink (but the book isn't actually by him, and it's very good indeed).
Most of the stuff with Keene's name probably isn't by him.
Yeah, I'll bet it's all David Levy's doing.
I can't believe people are adding Pandolfini and Keene books to the thread!
I can't believe people are adding Pandolfini and Keene books to the thread!
Lol. I not only added Pandolfini, but Reinfeld (who is imho just dreadful) ...
but I swear that particular Pandolfini book (which has almost zero text except a brief introduction) is great. As for putting the Reinfeld book on the list... call it a failed troll attempt 
Well, the real oddity is the "little-known" designation.
Great might be pushing it, but here's another little known Pandolfini book that's pretty good.
Keene's early books wern't bad. The one on Nimzowitch is actually good, and even one on 78 World championship reasonable. In that last one broke agreement with Korchnoi by doing a book at all, and spent more effort on it, than being his second.
"Modern Chess strategy" (Edvard Lasker)
Easy to read strategy for beginners.
A very good first book of strategy.
Somebody mentioned "Fundamental Theory" by Ilya Maizelis. Quality Chess is bringing that book out again under the title "The Soviet Chess Primer".
Great decision! I heard good things about it and the contents can already be seen on the quality chess website: http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/products/2/231/the_soviet_chess_primer_by_ilya_maizelis/
Something for the Christmas list!
I have some old Dover books which I really like. They are also cheap and sturdy paperbacks. Hard to beat in the "bang for your buck" department.
The first one is Jeno Ban's "The Tactics of Chess Endgames." A great collection of 239 endgame studies with beautiful tactical points. One of my favorite books.
The second is Israel Gelfer's "Positional Chess Handbook," which is a collection of 495 positions, each one illustrating some positional theme. This book is just chock full of outstanding positional maneuvers and analysis. A master class in positional play.
I nominate "Your First Move: Chess For Beginners" by Alexei Sokolski
I've shown this book to two FIDE masters at different times to ask their opinion. The beginning of the book shows the basics of how to move the pieces and how to read notation. Then it moves on from there to simple tactics. However, when they got a little over halfway through the book, they had a puzzled look on their face and came up with the same question: "This is a beginner's book???!"
Apparently, this book takes you from complete novice to about Class C. There aare complete example games, opening traps, lessons on quick development, endgame basics, middlegame basics, basic openings. It is a nice complete small handbook. Apparently, it was written in a Russian style of learning.
1. Six Hundred Endings by Portisch and Sarkozy - this book (in Russian) was my first endgame book. Since then I've got Dvoretsky, Muller, de la Villa but Portisch/Sarkozy always remains a favourite one. 600 examples of both theoretical and practical endgames, minimal but sufficient explanation, each example can be learned in 10-20 minutes.
2. Killer Moves by George Renko - not a book but tactics training database. Over 1600 beautiful and challenging problems. Most of them are from real games and each problem contains not just one but few tactical motifs.
This book has given me years of pleasure, also only in descriptive afaik.