Walkley Award-winning journalist, Sharri Markson is the Investigations Editor at The Australian and host of prime-time show Sharri on Sky News Australia.

The origins of Covid-19 are shrouded in mystery. Scientists and government officials insisted, for a year and a half, that the virus had a natural origin, ridiculing anyone who dared contradict this view. Tech giants swept the internet, censoring and silencing debate in the most extreme fashion. Yet it is undeniable that a secretive facility in Wuhan was immersed in genetically manipulating bat-coronaviruses in perilous experiments. And as soon as the news of an outbreak in Wuhan leaked, the Chinese military took control and gagged all laboratory insiders.

Part-thriller, part-expose, What Really Happened in Wuhan is a ground-breaking investigation from leading journalist Sharri Markson into the origins of Covid-19, the cover-ups, the conspiracies and the classified research. It features never-before-seen primary documents exposing China's concealment of the virus, fresh interviews with whistleblower doctors in Wuhan and crucial eyewitness accounts that dismantle what we thought we knew about when the outbreak hit.

With unprecedented access to Washington insiders, Markson takes you inside the White House, with senior Trump lieutenants revealing first-hand accounts of fiery Oval Office clashes and new stories of compromised government advisors and censored scientists.

Bravely reported and chillingly laid out, Markson brings to light the stories of the pandemic from the people on the ground: the scientists and national security officials who raised uncomfortable truths and were labelled conspiracy theorists, until government agencies began to suspect they might have been right all along. These brave individuals persisted through bruising battles and played a crucial role in investigating the origins of Covid-19 to finally, in this book, bring us closer to the truth of what really happened in Wuhan.

Where is South Africa going now? And where will South Africa be in five years’ time? Much has been written about the country’s past, but is enough thought being given to its future? Is South Africa in danger of again losing its way, given its pressing socio-economic challenges?

Prominent economist Raymond Parsons has drawn together a powerful collection of expert thinkers, economists and analysts who tackle these issues head on as well as offering timely solutions to several of South Africa’s most pressing problems, drawing key lessons from the past in crystallising what South Africa needs to do to create a better future.

After the so-called ‘lost decade’ under the Zuma administration, South Africans had high hopes that President Ramaphosa would deliver on his promise of a ‘new dawn’. Yet despite high expectations that the country would finally turn the corner and settle onto a path of stronger inclusive growth and better governance, socioeconomic conditions have deterioriated. Growth remains negligible, unemployment has worsened and the fiscus is under considerable strain. Will SA be able to break out of its present ‘growth trap’ without falling into a ‘debt trap’?

The country is also facing global headwinds in the form of volatile market conditions, shifting geopolitics, and a fast-changing and disruptive technological landscape which threatens to leave all but the most well-prepared behind. So how must the different strands of policy – ranging from purely economic issues to broader questions around education and the rule of law – now knit together to create a bigger, stronger and better SA economy in future?

If the vision of a well-functioning society is to be realised, policy uncertainty about the road ahead must be generally tackled at the highest level to facilitate job-rich growth. And business and civil society, in its turn, must take a long-term view of South Africa’s future and commit energy and resources to bringing about change which is both productive and transformational.

Recession, Recovery & Reform will offer compelling new insights into how South Africa can unlock its potential in the years ahead. The publication of this title a month ahead of the ANC policy conference in June 2020, at which President Ramaphosa’s political and economic ‘track record’ will be widely assessed, ensures it will be a must-read for all who are concerned about South Africa’s well-being and who are willing to believe that a ‘new dawn’ is indeed possible.

As the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe in recent months, many countries have had to implement strategies to fight the virus and keep its people safe. These strategies, particularly in the West, have not been as effective at keeping the numbers of infected people as low as the governments would have hoped.

Charles R Stith predicted the trajectory the virus would take as its spread progressed and developed a critical analysis of the western countries’ responses to the pandemic. He specifically focuses on South Africa’s response to the virus as it spearheads the surge of cases on the African continent.

The crisis has far reaching consequences that impacts the most vulnerable people in the country. A recent OXFAM report draws connections between the lockdown, to hunger, to deaths which confirms the statement Stith made at the beginning of the outbreak about how people would die of hunger as they lose their jobs, their ability to provide for their families and access to fresh foods.

Stith wrote this book in real time in response to the growth and spread of the coronavirus and analyses the results of South Africa’s response to it. He gives answers to the questions politicians should have been asking and gives his view of what Africa will require to recover

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry's story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world - and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

During the catastrophic HIV pandemic that escalated into a national crisis in South Africa, a single, remarkable hospital on a high ridge in the port city of Durban emerged as an internationally recognised community of care, treatment and research.

The story of McCord Hospital is an intersection of faith, medical pioneers, community making and knowledge production. Written by two historians and a medical doctor, the book takes its title – meaning ‘give us hope’ or ‘we give hope’ in isiZulu – from the name of McCord’s HIV clinic. The authors trace the arc of McCord Hospital from its humble roots in the early twentieth century through to its role as a global leader in the fight against HIV, bringing to life the tensions, triumphs and challenges of this era.

Sinikithemba is a history of the complex interface between medicine and society. It is impossible to understand the development of McCord’s innovative HIV programmes without coming to an understanding of McCord as a dynamic community of care, as a place sustained by thousands of people in Durban, and as a mission hospital that fought for survival and retained its sense of purpose under successive South African governments.

As McCord scaled up its treatment programme and drew significant support through PEPFAR funding, the wider hospital community expanded to include scientists and professors, clinicians and researchers, midwives and nurses, volunteers and donors, patients and families, provincial officials and philanthropists, pop stars and prayer groups.

At the height of a global crisis, in the city at the epicentre of the South African epidemic, hope was laboured into being at a hospital with a unique ethos and a long history of people-centred care. Sinikithemba tells that story.