In general, you should avoid any materials that are written by non-native Russian speakers. Trust me on this... when you become very fluent in the language and see the whole pattern of how people use the Russian language, you will find out that those Russian books written by non-native speakers are way out of league and you would think they are id!ots who are clueless about the language.
The best way to learn the Russian language is watch Russian movies on DVDs with Russian subtitles. Watch it over and over until you understand the movie fully, then move on to the next Russian movie with Russian subtitles. then move on to the next Russian movie... You can get to see the real Russian language from movies rather than those dry academic-standard textbooks. It is good for your listening skills, reading skills...
Also, read Russian books, news articles, and so on to pick up the vocabulary and grammer. Since people clamor that the hardest about the Russian language is grammar and the ending, the best way to learn the grammar is read, read, read, and you will instinctively see the pattern of how native speakers use the grammar and the ending of Russian words. Then, you can find grammar reference book to find out about the pattern that you see instinctively from reading Russian books and publications.
If you want to get a Russian beginner textbook, IMO, the best one is Y.G. Ovsiyenko - "Russian for beginners." It was written during the Soviet time and its text reflects the Soviet. However, it is way better than Nicholas Brown's Complete course for Beginner. It contains lots of reading and vocabulary building. It has a chapter on Russian intonation and pronounciations. It explains the tongue placement and how to position your tongue to pronounce the palatalized and non-palatalized sounds. If you want to learn more about Russian pronounciations, you can get audio cassette from Tania Bobrinskoy & Irina Gsovskaya. Also, Thomas Beyer's Pronounce it Perfectly in Russsia is good as well. It has a book on showing where your tongue is positioned when pronounce Russian words.
That may sound like a very hard work. If that is way too hard work for you, too bad, tough sh!t... that's your problem. Learning foreign language takes lots of passion, determination and hard work. If you are not willing to do it, don't do it... That's really great if you are willing to do anything to be fluent in the Russian language. I'd give you a high five and there's no limit that you can do in Russia with your knowledge of hte language.
