Maybe John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book? I'll give you a link to Coach Heisman's site. That's the only one he lists as being very difficult. Of course if you really want to learn chess systematically and are willing to put in the hours, then Yusupov or Dvoretsky or Aagaard all have a series of no nonsense books that are designed to take you to master level.
http://danheisman.home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Events_Books/General_Book_Guide.htm
Thanks, I've looked Nunn's book up and I like it - going to purchase it. As for the rest, I've already obtained Dvoretsky on the basis of my friend's recommendation (endings and strategy) :)
The grand daddy of tactics exercises is Lazlo Polgar's Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games which you get on Amazon for $20.
Another good resource is the Yugoslavian Informator "Anthology of Chess Combinations" by Matanovic and its predecessors which are much more expensive.
Most of the really good trainers other than this are harder to obtain.
Note that every Chess Informant has a list of combinations. Also, there is another trainer by Informant which is just a list of 3000 combinations, published back in the 1960s.
One book which is not a trainer that I very strongly recommend is Vukovic's "Art of the Attack". This is the best book ever written on tactics and mounting everyday attacks. I became noticeably stronger after reading this book because my king attacks got a lot more precise and I could calculate them faster after studying this book and doing the exercises. It teaches you the stock attacks like the sacrifice Bxh7 and Bxf7 and Nxf7. Once you learn these stock attacks cold you get a lot stronger.
I suspect any book of chess puzzles is good. Recently I borrowed a library book by Pandolfini (Chess Target Practice: Battle Tactics for Every Square on the Board, Bruce Pandolfini, 1994, New York: Simon & Schuster) that was quite decent. I especially liked it because most of the problems were taken from real games, in contrast to contrived positions that are unlikely to resemble anything you'll actually encounter, plus the book was organized by board square (starting at square a1), with some general wisdom with each move, plus the combinations were short, usually only 2-3 moves long.
If you don't mind software for tactics training, then you can pick a couple of items from this list :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgInNyeAavCUdGFkVnNENkRIWmJDNTZaMkNSeVlqWWc&usp=sharing
Anything above 1800 you should find challenging enough.
...and of course, there's the excellent ChessTempo website, which will throw you puzzles adapted to your level, but they are not ordered by theme...
@Vit
*bump-ing ..... ....
... .... this 2-year old thread from your comment on:
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/why-does-everyone-hate-on-the-chess-com-tactics
maybe you will find this is helpful; I liked some of it (still making my way through the pages), though it was a little advanced for me
Hello,
I have a question regarding a tactics training. Recently, I have decided to start to learn chess systematically - which I have never really done so - as a kid I was included in some training groups but I got eventually kicked out all of them because of lack of interest. I was told that the best way to start is to polish the endgame skills and tactics, and after while include some strategy (I have reasonable knowledge of openings). I already got a good book on endgames, but I have no idea what tactics book would be appropriate for my level (my FIDE rating is around 2050 and I am fairly good in tactics though I miss the less obvious one; in my country, I simply cannot get a book appropriate for my level and I am not familiar with neither English nor Russian publications). Could someone of you here help me to find some? Either in English or in Russian?
Thank you,
Vít