A lifetime of stories. 40 books to explore.

Tommy McKenzie’s Journey

Tommy McKenzie

Family, life and the places along the way. The continuing story of Tommy McKenzie.

Kindle edition · 141 print pages

Trust Me, I’m a Salesman

Gordon McLeish

From the brewery boy to a life in sales: the people, chances and lessons along the road.

Kindle edition · 98 print pages

The Sunlit Door

Tommy McKenzie

The Butenko family story: Ukraine, war, displacement and a new life in Australia.

Kindle edition · 130 print pages

Dad, I Think We’re Irish

Gordon McLeish

A family mystery across Ireland, Scotland, Canada, America and Australia.

Kindle edition · 146 print pages

Bound in Chains, Sentenced to Hope

Gordon McLeish

Family history drawn from surviving records, bringing the convict stories into the light.

Kindle edition · 178 print pages

The Men Who Made Tommy

Tommy McKenzie

The men and generations whose stories came before Tommy’s own.

Kindle edition · 159 print pages

Are You My Husband?

Gordon McLeish

Gordon McLeish shares the laughter, heartbreak and enduring devotion of caring for his wife Marian through dementia. A love story beyond memory.

Kindle edition · 80 print pages

McKenzie of the First Fleet

Gordon McLeish

Marine officer McKenzie bound for Botany Bay with Watkin Tench — adventure and humour on the voyage that founded a colony. Second edition, with revised prose and improved formatting.

Kindle edition · 102 print pages

Uncle Joe

Gordon McLeish

Joe McGoran’s war took him from Glasgow to Aruba, Shetland and Monte Cassino. He came home without his right arm and right leg, determined to build a life with Isa and their children. To his family, he was simply Uncle Joe.

Kindle edition · 106 print pages

McKenzie of the Rum Years

Gordon McLeish

Callum McKenzie in Macquarie’s Sydney — adventure and humour, not a textbook.

Kindle edition · 85 print pages

McKenzie: The Governor’s Godson

Gordon McLeish

Lachlan McKenzie, godson to Governor Macquarie — adventure and humour, not a textbook.

Kindle edition · 99 print pages

Batman’s Shadow

Gordon McLeish

Port Phillip from the edge — Hamish McKenzie in Batman’s shadow, land, loyalty, and the Geelong foothold.

Kindle edition · 113 print pages

Smoke on Bakery Hill

Gordon McLeish

Eureka from the edge — Lachlan McKenzie on Bakery Hill, loyalty, and Victoria’s goldfields.

Kindle edition · 194 print pages

Favourable Circumstances

Gordon McLeish

Young Lachlan McKenzie behind the grand promises of the Burke and Wills expedition — a Melbourne clerk, inconvenient truths, dry humour and family warmth.

Kindle edition · 252 print pages

McKenzie at Villers-Bretonneux

Gordon McLeish

Dougal McKenzie’s Great War — Anzac Day night at Villers-Bretonneux, and the long way home.

Kindle edition · 96 print pages

McKenzie & The Troublemaker

Gordon McLeish

Nile campaign adventure — Sandy McKenzie and the Troublemaker of family lore, brushmaker-soldier William Murphy, under Sudan dusk.

Kindle edition · 311 print pages

The Black Tin Box

Gordon McLeish

After Dad dies at 106, Gordon and Klava open his black tin. A clothes brush marked William Murphy The Troublemaker and a brass button lead them through Glasgow, the wars and a family’s long journey to Melbourne in 2026.

Kindle edition · 259 print pages

The Man They Called McLeish

Gordon McLeish

A white-series family history of the man they called McLeish — Scotland to Australia, told with care.

Available on Amazon · Kindle and paperback · 302 print pages

The Man Who Was Named Richard Cochrane

Gordon McLeish

The young shoemaker’s story — Richard Cochrane — told in the same quiet white-series family style.

Coming soon to Amazon · 334 print pages

My Dad — John McLeish

Gordon McLeish

Jack Finney said there was a sea in it. John McLeish never forgot — a son’s memoir of Dad, from Parkhead to a hundred and six.

Kindle edition · 226 print pages

My Mum — Rebecca Murphy

Gordon McLeish

A son’s portrait of Rebecca Murphy, from a Glasgow tenement to Australia, and the warning she gave at every door.

Kindle edition · 372 print pages

The McKenzie White Cover Series — Part One

Gordon McLeish

Omnibus Part One: McKenzie of the First Fleet, McKenzie of the Rum Years, The Governor’s Godson, and Batman’s Shadow — four books, one family from Sydney Cove to Port Phillip.

Available on Amazon · Kindle and paperback · 510 print pages

The McKenzie White Cover Series — Part Two

Gordon McLeish

Omnibus Part Two: Smoke on Bakery Hill and Favourable Circumstances — gold rush Victoria and the family under pressure.

Available on Amazon · Kindle and paperback · 456 print pages

The McKenzie White Cover Series — Part Three

Gordon McLeish

Omnibus Part Three: McKenzie & The Troublemaker, McKenzie at Villers-Bretonneux, and The Black Tin Box — the later saga through to the present.

Available on Amazon · Kindle and paperback · 678 print pages

The Tommy Books — Three in One

Gordon McLeish

Three family books in one volume — The Men Who Made Tommy, Built on the Clyde, and Tommy’s Journey.

Available on Amazon · Kindle and paperback · 510 print pages

The McLeish Stories — Four in One

Gordon McLeish

Four family stories in one volume — Trust Me I’m a Salesman, Dad I Think We Are Irish, Are You My Husband, and Uncle Joe.

Coming soon to Amazon · PDF and EPUB · 458 print pages

McKenzie and the Fenians

Gordon McLeish

A McKenzie Saga novel: young Fin McKenzie, a stoker on the steamer Georgette, and his Irish uncle Con are caught up in the 1876 Catalpa rescue of six Fenian prisoners from Fremantle.

Coming Soon · PDF and EPUB · 312 print pages

McKenzie and the Colourful Ones

Gordon McLeish

A McKenzie Saga novel: the family's black-sheep line, from Sullivan Bay in 1803 through the bushrangers, Marvellous Melbourne, John Wren's tote and Squizzy Taylor to a Ringwood car yard.

Coming Soon · PDF and EPUB · 342 print pages

McKenzie of the Thin Red Line

Gordon McLeish

Ewan McKenzie, a Sutherland boy from the emptied glens, joins the 93rd Highlanders and stands two deep in the thin red line at Balaklava in 1854, then carries his Highland humour through Scutari and the Indian Mutiny at Lucknow.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON · 348 print pages

McKenzie and the King’s Mercy

Gordon McLeish

In 1746, Highland lad Donald McKenzie draws the King’s mercy in a lottery—and mercy means seven years of bonded labour in the tobacco fields of Virginia. His son Alasdair is born free, with a gift for forging handwriting and finding trouble. A small kindness to a young Watkin Tench follows him across an ocean, all the way to Botany Bay.

Coming Soon · PDF and EPUB · 270 print pages

McKenzie of the North

Gordon McLeish

Eleven years after Culloden, the government that beheaded the Frasers' chief pays his son to raise them as a regiment; Colin McKenzie climbs the cliff at Quebec with them in 1759, and fifty years on Gregor McKenzie cuts Telford's Caledonian Canal through the Great Glen.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON · 474 print pages

McKenzie and the Ulva Boy (Expanded Edition)

Gordon McLeish

July 1824: Governor Lachlan Macquarie is dead in London, and old soldier Ranald McKenzie has to get him home to Mull by sea, with a servant who became a free man the moment he set foot in Scotland, and there's no sign anybody ever told him.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON · 368 print pages

Two Brothers, Two Worlds

Gordon McLeish

Two novels in one, McKenzie and the Taipans and McKenzie and the Telegraph Boy: Gavin McKenzie is in opium-era Hong Kong when a handful of merchants start the bank the world now calls HSBC, while his brother Robbie runs telegrams beside a young Andrew Carnegie and follows the wire into the American Civil War.

Coming Soon · PDF and EPUB · 360 print pages

McKenzie and the Settlement at Port Jackson

Gordon McLeish

January 1790: Fergus McKenzie comes ashore at Sydney Cove off the Neptune, where more than a third of the convicts died on the voyage, into a starving colony where a convict who can shoot is worth his weight in salt pork.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON · 302 print pages

McKenzie of the Slave Coast

Gordon McLeish

Plymouth, 1845: Lieutenant Ranald McKenzie, twenty-two and broke, gets the berth nobody wants, hunting slave ships with the West Africa Squadron off the deadliest coast in the world, where fever kills more men than cannon.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON · 276 print pages

McKenzie of the Colonial Navy

Gordon McLeish

Melbourne, 1854: Ranald McKenzie comes ashore to help build a navy for a colony drunk on gold, and ends up on the Ballarat road as the soldiers march on the Eureka Stockade.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON · 184 print pages

McKenzie and the Iron Dog

Gordon McLeish

1860: Ranald McKenzie goes from the New Zealand wars to the hunt for Burke and Wills, then brings home HMVS Cerberus, an ugly iron monitor that guarded Melbourne for fifty years without firing a shot.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON · 180 print pages

McKenzie and the Dragon

Gordon McLeish

Williamstown, 1900: young Tom McKenzie signs up with two hundred Victorian sailors to fight the Boxers in China, and they sail home as Victorians and land as Australians.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON · 134 print pages

McKenzie and the Barrister’s Thief

Gordon McLeish

London, 1784: fifteen-year-old Matthew Everingham steals a barrister's law books, gets seven years' transportation on the First Fleet, and spends years writing letters to the very man he robbed.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON · 176 print pages