Winner of the 2002 Anna Pidruchney Award For New Writers On a visit to Ukraine to retrieve a family heirloom secretly buried by his grandfather during the Second World War, Yaroslaw, a Ukrainian-Canadian university student, stumbles into a world full of spies and secret organizations, peril and political intrigue. His discovery of the hidden cache yields clues to the location of a fabled lost treasure-the greatest in all Europe. Working against time, Yaroslaw and a small band of accomplices struggle to uncover and save a nation’s heritage, operating in secret to prevent the corrupt leaders of the government and the Russians-from stealing it. Yaroslaw’s Treasure is a thrilling suspense story set against the gripping drama of the Orange Revolution, the 2004 popular uprising that saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in Ukraine to overthrow a corrupt government and reinforce democracy in a land long occupied by repressive and foreign regimes. Rich with history, romance, politics, and danger, Yaroslaw’s Treasure superbly captures the wonders and horrors of Ukraine’s past, swirls through the treacherous currents of its present politics, all the while providing entertainment as a first-rate thriller.

Halimpex, of Lviv, Ukraine had just been recognized as the world's largest volume producer of glass Christmas tree ornaments, when on November 14th, 2006, Bohdan Datsko its owner, was gunned down as his white C-class Mercedes passed through the security gate of his factory. Despite seven bullet wounds to the neck and chest, nobody had heard anything; nobody saw a gun; and no cartridge casings were found on the scene. Bohdan's driver, sitting beside the victim was unaware of anything amiss until he saw the blood. Six days later, Mad Max Kurochkin, a notorious Russian gangster, was arrested on charges of theft and extortion upon his landing in Kyiv while on his way to make preparations for President Putin's visit to Ukraine. Three days later, on November 23rd, Alexander Litvinenko died in London, England, of Polonium 210 radiation poisoning. On March 31, 2007, Mad Max Kurochkin was assassinated by a sniper's bullet, while he was being led from a Kyiv courthouse to a waiting paddy wagon. The sniper was not apprehended. In today's Ukraine, reality is much stranger than fiction. But Yaroslaw's Revenge threads a story through this tangled web to culminate in a story even stranger still The western world's press reported an act of piracy in the Baltic Sea, just off the coast of Sweden on July 24, 2009. Then, on July 28, the victim freighter, the MV Arctic Sea, sailed past Dover reporting, when hailed by the British Coast Guard, that all was in order. Yet the Russian Navy had already sent its entire Black Sea Fleet in pursuit of this ship - that was ostensibly carrying nothing but lumber. The MV Arctic Sea totally missed its destination port of Bejaia Algeria, and instead sailed slowly southward along Africa's western coast. In Yaroslaw's Revenge the tale of the MV Arctic Sea's actual cargo is the thread that links murder, assassination, piracy, espionage, drugs and war with the untimely death, on the third anniversary of that of Alexander Litvinenko, of Maj. Gen. Anton Surikov of the Russian GRU. The Cold War thriller is back! This time it is Canada's ITAC, the Integrated Threat Assessment Center, that holds the key to interdiction of a nuclear threat.

When Luc Cadotte, diplomat and spy, returns home from Latin America during the FLQ Crisis, he becomes entangled in political machinations and a story of espionage, betrayal, and love gone wrong. Facing an unprecedented wave of domestic terrorism, Cadotte must weigh his ethics against public safety, with lives on the line.

In Come Looking for Me, a mysterious young English woman named Emily risks a crossing of the Atlantic during the War of 1812 for the promise of a new adventure in Canada. But she never arrives. Captured by Captain Trevelyan, a man as cold-blooded as his frigate is menacing, Emily is held prisoner aboard the USS Serendipity. Seeking to save herself, she makes a desperate escape overboard in the midst of a raging sea battle and is rescued by the British crew of HMS Isabelle. Yet Emily has only exchanged one form of captivity for another, and remains in peril as England escalates its fight against the United States on the Atlantic. On board the Isabelle, Emily encounters a crew of fascinating seamen and strikes up unexpected friendships, but life on a man-of-war is full of deprivations and dangers to which she is unaccustomed. Amidst heartache and tragedy at sea, she struggles to find her place among the men until a turn of events reveals her true identity. And when Trevelyan’s ship once again looms on the horizon, Emily fears losing the only man she has ever loved and falling into the hands of the only man she has ever loathed. Come Looking for Me is a rich and compelling story of love and courage, friendship and treachery, triumph and loss. With humour and poignancy, author Cheryl Cooper captures all the colour, detail, and excitement of the great ships from the golden age of sail, while bringing to life those who fought upon them. She tells a story of the bravery of the men locked in the epic, brutal struggle that was the War of 1812, and the courage of a woman who, with extraordinary determination, labours to make her own way in life and in love.

Flam Grub is the tale of a young man's struggle to escape the netherworld of his own life and come to terms with the curse of an unusual name.

Three to a Loaf is the First World War story of Rory Ferrall, a young Canadian officer of Anglo-German descent who, after being wounded and disfigured at Ypres, comes to the attention of British military intelligence. Ferrall’s German background is valuable to the war’s planners. Hundreds of German-Americans had returned to the Fatherland to fight for the Kaiser at the outbreak of war in August 1914 and the British captured one. Cleverly trained to impersonate the captured German-American officer, Ferrall is smuggled into wartime Germany to infiltrate the German General Staff and discover their top-secret plan to break the stalemate on the Western Front. A page-turning novel of war and espionage, Three to a Loaf is also a portrait of societies and individuals pushed to the breaking point, and in some cases, beyond. Michael Goodspeed artfully blends the tension of a thriller with period detail, the detached commentary of a nitty-gritty travelogue, and psychological understanding of a harried man facing soul-destroying ethical decisions.

When Yaroslaw leaves Canada for Ukraine to search for family heirlooms his grandparents buried during the Second World War, he has no inkling his personal explorations will draw him into a dangerous quest for Europe's greatest treasure, or that he will be caught up in the swirling intrigues of Ukraine's "Orange Revolution."