Terry and Hannah Brooks are New Zealand authors who write from very different corners of the same idea. They moved to New Zealand from the UK about fifteen years ago and met, somewhat fittingly for two writers, on rival quiz teams in a pub. These days they run a small hobby farm in the Bay of Plenty, where Terry restores old tractors in his spare time and Hannah is deep into PhD research on improving adolescent psychological health through healthy lifestyles. Terry is also a self-taught artist, and he painted the cover artwork for both of their books himself.
A 2026 memoir by Terry Brooks about suffering a severe vaccine injury and fighting an unsupportive medical system.
A Vaccine Injury Memoir
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in late 2019, like most people, I was prepared to do my bit, to trust the system and follow the advice. So when the vaccines came round, I rolled up my sleeve. That is when disaster struck.
Injured by Trust is the story of what happened next: how I went from being an active hobby farmer to a paralysed patient trapped in a system that will do almost anything to avoid the truth. It is about battling a crippling disease and, at the same time, fighting for justice and the right to be heard. It took sheer will and determination, a tenacious partner who refused to give up on me, and a miracle diet to claw back my life.
This book traces the collision between personal catastrophe and institutional denial: navigating hospitals, specialists, and compensation schemes that insist the benefits outweigh the risks, even as my body told a different story. Along the way, it asks uncomfortable questions about consent, accountability, and what happens to those of us who become the “rare cases” policy-makers would rather forget. This is a first-hand account of what it means when “doing your bit” breaks the social contract on your body, and a challenge to how many lives like mine can be written off as acceptable risk.
Disillusioned with rural life, twenty-six-year-old Alan falls for Catherine, a beautiful but troubled young woman whose secrets threaten them both. Their relationship challenges a judgmental farming community, forces Alan to confront his troubled past, and brings him into conflict with the law. Can their love survive suspicion, scandal and consequences?
Disillusioned with living in a close-knit Yorkshire farming community, twenty-six year old Alan needs a release from his mundane but pressured life. Intelligent and beautiful, Catherine is everything he wants, but she is as lonely and messed up as he is. Love is inevitable between these two misfits but Alan gets in too deep before he finds out the truth about her. The community do not condone the relationship and are eager to remind Alan of his delinquent past. Catherine has a shadow of her own to contend with. This love affair forces Alan to face his demons, the wrath of the locals and ultimately, the law. Can this love survive where people are quick to judge but refuse to know?
In 2030, a deadly virus wipes out most of humanity, leaving the rest of humanity trapped in smart cities under global federation control. One man can crack the code. When owning nothing is mandatory and happiness is an output metric, how much are you willing to break to stay human?
In 2030, a deadly fungal virus wipes out eighty percent of the world’s population. A Global Federation seizes control, leaving world governance split between ex‑UN autocrats and heavily fire-walled Russia.
When young dissident tech‑wizz Jake Arden is exiled and left for dead in neutral Polesia, fate has other plans. Now in the hands of rogue farmers, a failed systems‑developer nerd and a Russian patrol, he becomes the one man who can turn Smart City code into their biggest weakness.
Years later, Olivia Matisse discovers Lydia Marcova, a genetic anomaly, whose existence reveals the Federation’s secret plan to lock the human genome under an algorithm.
As Jake attempts to crack the grid from the outside, Olivia works from within. Their stories converge on a single act of rebellion in a crowded Bristol creche thirty years earlier. Pulling on that thread could save the people they love, or bring the whole world crashing down.
A Tale of Two Smart Cities is a funny, futuristic thriller, where The Hunger Games meets 1984.
When owning nothing is mandatory and happiness is an output metric, how much are you willing to break to stay human?
Find out more about Terry and Hannah’s books at booksinspire.net