Not a book. But I saw Al Murray (the pub landlord) on a documentary (BBC? ) who rolled out aerial photos of one of the beachs. A tiny part of the whole landing area. Covered in black dots. Each dot was a dead allied soldier

I heartily recommend John Keegan's Six Armies In Normandy.

I read D-Day by Stephen Ambrose years ago. It is long but covers the topic pretty well. I still think about a lot of the stories in that book.

I also highly recommend the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. I remember all the beaches and battlefields, but the cemetery probably had the most impact.

The Longest Day is a wonderful account of D-Day and gave me a great history of the area before I visited.

Read Max Hastings book "Overlord" and/or Antony Beevor's "D-Day: The Battle for Normandy". Both are respected authors and will give you a good insight as to what exactly happened. There are many other books of course, but the above are the two I'd suggest.

I have this book : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mapping-Second-World-Michael-Sharpe/dp/1844862496 which has maps of all the beaches, German defences and so on, lots of other WW2 battleground maps too.

I haven't seen it yet but a friend recently visited the Normandy coast, on his return he found a book in WH Smiths that he says contains maps of D-Day and the beaches which he has found interesting, he said it was only £5 so might be worth looking for. It might be this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/D-Day-The-story-through-maps/dp/0007592833 but I don't know for sure - that one is £7 for a new copy on amazon.

For visuals, if you haven't seen it you may want to watch the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan, as far as I understand it the landing scenes are pretty accurate of what happened on Omaha.