Reddit reviews The Lady in the Painting: A Basic Chinese Reader, Expanded Edition, Simplified Characters (Far Eastern Publications Series) (English and Simplified Chinese Edition)

The Lady in the Painting is a short book written from 300 of the most basic characters. The end of each chapter has a short explanation of some vocabulary and sentence patterns.

http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Painting-Expanded-Simplified-Publications/dp/030012516X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302509627&sr=8-1

Get learning materials that come with DVDs and CDs that way you can hear how it's pronounced when you're practicing. You still won't have the correction of having a teacher with you, so if you can practice with someone, that helps too.

Here are used versions of the beginning materials I had for my first semester of Chinese: book Some of them don't come with the CD so you might want to watch for that, though I got a lot more use out of the separate DVD

Edit: We didn't get into this until later (like second year Chinese) but here's our first major reading material that came with a CD to help us practice our flow and pronunciation when reading.

still pretty early, but at the end of my first year we had to read the lady in the painting (http://www.amazon.com/The-Lady-Painting-Expanded-Edition/dp/030012516X ) which is probably the best you'll find at your level. helped me a lot, took some work but definitely worth the time.

I've used The Lady in the Painting before, it's pretty solid.

There's also the Chinese Breeze series, or Anna Mei Banfa.

What's your exact level, like, say, HSK-wise?