The Painted Veil

 The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham (1925) 246 pages

Set in the 1920s, this novel follows Kitty, a beautiful young English woman whose mother has high hopes for her to make a great match. But Kitty's mother thinks that each beau who woos Kitty isn't good enough. When Kitty is 25, in a panic, she marries Walter Fane and moves to Hong Kong, where he's a bacteriologist who works for the government. When Walter discovers she's having an affair, he gives Kitty a choice: if her lover will divorce his wife and marry Kitty, Walter will give Kitty a divorce. Otherwise, Kitty must follow him to an area in China which lost its only doctor to cholera, and where cholera is still raging. Heartbroken when her lover won't leave his wife, Kitty goes into the heartland of China with Walter. The story finally takes off and Kitty begins to show some character.

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah, 271 pages.

Sonia Shah, medical writer extraordinaire, presents a compelling account of both historic cholera epidmecs, and more recent events, such as ebola and bired-flu epidemics that have threatened to become pandemics. She traces cholera from its origins in the flooding mangrove swamps in the Sundarbans region of what is now Bangaladesh, to the recent outbreak in Haiti. Shah explains how the Vibrio Cholare bacterium had always been present, occasionally causing illness in those who wandered out into those waters. It wasn't until the vibrio mutated, changed to secrete a strong toxin, and found a way to attach itself to the inner walls of its human host's intestine.
Epidemiologists now live in fear for when the next zoonoses  adapts for human to human transmission.
I look forward to reading her 2010 book, The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years.