Recommendation for TACTICS book

I've never bought a book, and am asking for suggestions for a book that has alot of puzzles that you can solve and explainations of those puzzles. I prefer books where I am assigned problems to do, because...practice makes perfect! Reading only gets you half way, if I don't practice I'll forget what I read.

Try Ward Farnsworth's Predator at the Chessboard. It has puzzles and explanations.

first off, nothing beat the Tactics Trainer - you get WAY more problems than any book ;)

secondly, if you need a book, get Sharpen Your Tactics!

chess tactics by paul  littlewood

In addition to what #2 mentioned, I am going after Starting Out : Tactics and Checkmates. I also picked up Simple Tactics by Gilliam.

complete chess workout by R. Palliser

Tactics Trainer has 25 thousand tactics puzzles...

Book: Laszlo Polgar's Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games

Try "The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book", By John Emms. 1000 Tactical problems arranged in order of difficulty.

Book:  Susan Polgar's Chess Tactics for Champions.

I like Heisman's Back to Basics: Tactics (more explanations) as a first puzzle book and Polgar's Chess Tactics for Champions (more puzzles) as a second puzzle book.

Thanks for the responses. I have decided to go with:

-Sharpen Your Tactics

and

-1 one-year GOLD membership to Chess.com (That way I still have a LIMIT to how much time I spend doing those puzzles!)

I am considering "The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book" as well.

Any good tactics book will run you anywhere from $25-$35.  Just spend the $30 on a gold membership.  Computer workout and Tactics trainer will keep you busy for a long time.  But, Seriwan's winning chess tactics is good if you want a book.  I bought it about 2 months ago.  There's plenty of puzzles in it, and explanations.

Books are good, but tactics, as you know, require lots of practice.  So pick a website with a tactics server and go to town.  A book I can recomend is Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics.  I recomend this book for two reasons.  First, Yasser is awesome.  Second, the emphasis on combinations over simple tactics is something I haven't seen in a lot of tactics manuals.  Whatever you get, I would make sure that it at least partly focuses on combinations, because you don't really need to buy a book to study the tactics themselves.

If you are new to chess the the work books sold onStappenmethode.nlare a good introduction to chess, tactics, and basic endings.  Every section starts with an explanation of the concept followed by many compositions using the concept.  It's a good way to get up to speed quickly.

I've been to CTS, but didn't like how it's rushed. I'll check out Chess Tempo now.