Viking – Knjiga.hr

The Inner Circle

Mon, 25 May 2026 18:13:59 +0000

Set in mid‑twentieth‑century America, this novel reimagines the life and work of pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey through the eyes of a young protégé drawn into his clandestine circle. As the team gathers intimate data for what will become groundbreaking studies of human sexual behavior, the narrator finds himself caught between scientific zeal, personal loyalty, and the moral codes of a conservative era. The story explores ambition, obsession, the costs of radical inquiry, and the uneasy boundary between private life and public revelation. T. C. Boyle, known for his energetic prose and sharp engagement with historical subjects, brings both empathy and irony to this portrait of intellectual rebellion. Blending meticulous research with psychological insight, the novel offers a provocative look at how knowledge is made—and at the human desires that complicate it. A compelling choice for readers interested in history, science, and the hidden dramas behind cultural change.

Silverview

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 17:11:24 +0000

Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian’s evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian’s family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise. When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea… Silverview is the mesmerizing story of an encounter between innocence and experience and between public duty and private morals. In his inimitable voice John le Carré, the greatest chronicler of our age, seeks to answer the question of what we truly owe to the people we love.

Dolores Clairborne

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 18:38:39 +0000

For thirty years, folks on Little Tall Island have been waiting to find out just what happened on the eerie dark day Dolores Claiborne’s husband died — the day of the total eclipse. Now, the police want to know what happened yesterday when her rich, bedridden employer died suddenly in her care. With no choice but to talk, Dolores gives her compelling confession … of the strange and terrible links forged by hidden intimacies … of the fierceness of a mother’s love and its dreadful consequences … of the silent rage that can turn a woman’s heart to hate. When Dolores Claiborne is accused of murder, it’s only the beginning of the bad news. For what comes after that is something only Stephen King could imagine … as he rips open the darkest secrets and the most damning sins of men and women in an ingrown. Maine town and takes you on a trip below its straitlaced surface.

Gerald’s Game

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 18:38:23 +0000

A game. A husband-and-wife game. Gerald’s Game. But this time Jessie didn’t want to play. Lying there, spreadeagled and handcuffed to the bedstead while he’d loomed and drooled over her, she’d felt angry and humiliated. So she’d kicked out hard. Aimed to hit him where it hurt. And now he was dead – a coronary – on the floor. Leaving Jessie alone and helpless in a lakeside holiday cabin. Miles from nowhere. No-one to hear her screams. Alone. Except for the voices in her head that begun to chatter and argue and sneer…

The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 07:41:15 +0000

Every week seems to throw up a new discovery, shaking the foundations of what we know. But are there questions we will never be able to answer—mysteries that lie beyond the predictive powers of science? In this captivating exploration of our most tantalizing unknowns, Marcus du Sautoy invites us to consider the problems in cosmology, quantum physics, mathematics, and neuroscience that continue to bedevil scientists and creative thinkers who are at the forefront of their fields. At once exhilarating, mind-bending, and compulsively readable, The Great Unknown challenges us to consider big questions—about the nature of consciousness, what came before the big bang, and what lies beyond our horizons—while taking us on a virtuoso tour of the great breakthroughs of the past and celebrating the men and women who dared to tackle the seemingly impossible and had the imagination to come up with new ways of seeing the world.

Rationality : what it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 15:42:20 +0000

Today humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding–and also appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply irrational–cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives, and set out the benchmarks for rationality itself. We actually think in ways that are sensible in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we’ve discovered over the millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and optimal ways to update beliefs and commit to choices individually and with others. These tools are not a standard part of our education, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book–until now. Rationality also explores its opposite: how the rational pursuit of self-interest, sectarian solidarity, and uplifting mythology can add up to crippling irrationality in a society. Collective rationality depends on norms that are explicitly designed to promote objectivity and truth. Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with Pinker’s customary insight and humor, Rationality will enlighten, inspire, and empower.

Mistery

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 17:48:26 +0000

Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 19:11:57 +0000

Backed by a wealth of new research, John Cornwell tells for the first time the story of the World War II career of Eugenio Pacelli, the man who was Pope Pius XII, arguably the most dangerous churchman in modern history. In the first decade of the century, as a brilliant young Vatican lawyer, Pacelli helped shape a new ideology of unprecedented papal power in Germany. In 1933 Hitler became his negotiating partner, an agreement was arranged that granted religious and financial payments to the Catholic Church in exchange for their withdrawal from social and political privillage, ensuring the rise of Nazism.

Expo 58

Sun, 28 May 2023 18:58:17 +0000

This novel can be read in a number of ways: as a traditional English ‘comic novel’ in the tradition of Henry Fielding, Michael Frayn and Kingsley Amis; as an hommage to British comedy films of the 1930s, 40s and 50s; as a parody of Cold War spy fiction; and as the latest chapter in an interlocking network of novels and short stories which I’ve been writing for the last two decades. The story centres around a quiet, unassuming but handsome young civil servant, Thomas Foley, who is sent on a six-month assignment to Brussels, scene of the great World’s Fair of 1958. Expo 58 was an important historical event which still occupies a huge place in the collective memory of the Belgian people: the first such event after the Second World War, and a significant milestone in the reconciliation between the warring nations; the beginning of a closer co-operation between the European countries, shortly after the Treaty of Rome had been signed; and a landmark in the development of modern technology and architectural design. At the centre of it all was the Atomium which, since I first visited it in 2010, has become one of my favourite buildings in the world.

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 19:18:28 +0000

From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals in his spellbinding new book, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic, heroic, exhilarating, and profound. The Mayflower’s religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period of crisis for Native Americans as disease spread by European fishermen devastated their populations. Initially the two groups—the Wampanoags, under the charismatic and calculating chief Massasoit, and the Pilgrims, whose pugnacious military officer Miles Standish was barely five feet tall—maintained a fragile working relationship. But within decades, New England would erupt into King Philip’s War, a savagely bloody conflict that nearly wiped out English colonists and natives alike and forever altered the face of the fledgling colonies and the country that would grow from them. With towering figures like William Bradford and the distinctly American hero Benjamin Church at the center of his narrative, Philbrick has fashioned a fresh and compelling portrait of the dawn of American history—a history dominated right from the start by issues of race, violence, and religion.