Do you mean the “Mel Bay The essential Tin Whistle Toolbox with CD” or do you talk about “Mel Bay Essential Guide to irish Flute and Tin Whistle”?
the second one. According to amazon, it comes with 2 cds. That’s the one I’m looking at, though I wonder if someone could compare the two you’ve listed.
Oh you know, I’m getting frustrated. The thing I wrote about my location proves more and more true. 
I just can’t lay my hands on these books. Amazon.com has them all, in my country they are just not available. Add taxes and duty fees and the prices rocket to the sky.
I found a third book I’m interested in (unfortunately not available either). It’s called “Mel Bay’s Complete Irish TW book” by Mizzy McCaskill. There’s a version with CD.
I’m wondering whether a CD with tin whistle only would be better than one with other instruments accompanying it.
I’d vote for the Ochs book for its explanations of basic technique.
I’d also recommend the Cotter one that Peter mentioned for its examples of tunes on the CD. The book comes with one CD (or the edition I bought did), but there is an additional CD available with more tunes. If one gets the whole bunch it is a really substantial package.
Hey, now I do have a problem. 
I just can’t decide wether to go for Ochs or for Larsen. Then again, I should be happy that I did find a shop in my country that’s actually got them.
If you can afford them, buy both.
Start with the Ochs for the lessons, but do some browsing in the Larsen too. Once you start to get a feel for the instrument and know some tunes pretty solidly, try applying some of Larsen’s ideas and ornamentation to the tunes in the Ochs book. The two books make a terrific combination.
I’m just going maaaaad…
The thing I wrote about my “location” proves more and more true.
Neither the Ochs nor the Larsen book are readily available. If it were only for a few weeks, I would not complain. It just seems that all book stores in my country (online or real-life) conspired to claim the publishers were not able to deliver.
Hell-O! How come they don’t have these problems in any of the anglophone countries?! 
I’ve just calculated the prices when ordering them abroad. Turns out I don’t have that much cash.
Seems I’ll have to annoy my regular book supplier until he’ll order a single copy of either Ochs’ or Larsen’s. 
Tikva
tinwistle.de offers Ochs’ book as well as the Workhop books by Andreas Joseph (in German) for a, let’s say, affordable price. Neither of the books is exactly cheap (in fact, the prices are pretty high), but at least they’re available, and the Workshop books (I&II) fit your (enhanced) description pretty neatly, too.
I’ll be getting the lot for christmas…
M.
I have a copy, and would even be willing to sell it to you for little more than the cost of postage, but I’ll warn you: in my humble opinion, it’s not a very good book. The CD is, frankly, terrible.
PM me if I haven’t scared you away already. 
-Craig
Thanks for the offer Craig. Frankly, you’ve scared me… Uhm, what would be a good book in your oppinion? CD is absolutely necessary. While I know how to read sheet music, I keep the rhythm more by ear than anything else.
IMHO, I think that the Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle is very much along the lines of what you’re looking for. I have found the written explanations as well as the CD examples of ornamentation and articulation to be very helpful. It’s a bit on the dense side but very very thorough and understandable, especially for someone who already has a background in reading and playing music.
If you go to Amazon I’m pretty sure you can do the look inside the book thing, which will help confirm whether this is the right book for you.
Maybe a forum member would be willing to buy the book for you and ship it to you for cost or near cost?
I haven’t found many books that I’ve really liked. I agree with you that listening to recorded music is the best way to learn. I think that June McCormack’s flute tutor (which works fine for a whistle, too) is one of the best in terms of having really useful audio and good discussion, but be advised that it’s very narrowly focused on ornamentation. It does a great job with that, but doesn’t really cover most other topics, such as breathing.
The best discussion of whistle playing I’ve found is Brother Steve’s web site. Yes, you have to be in front of your computer to use it, but you also don’t need to read it while you practice playing. There are several good web sites with slow MP3 audio which you can download and listen to what you play.
-Craig