CHARLENE CHALLENGER
ABOUT
Charlene Challenger is a writer and graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University's Acting Program. Her first novel, the young adult fantasy The Voices In Between, was nominated for the 2015 Aurora Award for Best Young Adult Novel and longlisted for the 2015 Sunburst Award Young Adult Novel category. Its sequel, The Myth In Distance, was published in 2016. Her latest work, Sister Dragon, is now available (10,000 Presses, 2024). She lives in Cambridge, Ontario.
BOOKS
The Voices In Between
Tightrope Books, 2014
Adoni lives in a downtown apartment with her abusive, alcoholic mother. One evening, she finds herself drawn to the enchanting voice of a man singing in the alley beneath her bedroom window. The man, Ritter, brings Adoni to The Welcome, a northern colony of the In-Between world, where young people who have been rescued from harm are kept safe by their sworn immortal protectors, the pipers. But when The Welcome is attacked by changelings—led by the vicious and charismatic Sylvester—and a centuries-old grudge spills over the edge and threatens to destroy the colony and everyone who lives there, Adoni must find the strength and courage within to stop the oncoming war.
Your dragon doesn't need slaying.
PRAISE FOR CHARLENE'S WORK
“The Voices In Between is an ambitious and sophisticated fantasy, written with evocative, brooding beauty. Challenger makes words on a page caress the ear like music or jar against the soul with a chilling and suspenseful grip.” –CM: Canadian Review of Materials
For The Voices In Between: “Challenger has given a gift of adventure with this beautifully painted journey.” –Catherine Hernandez, author of Scarborough and Crosshairs
“Charlene Challenger’s The Voices In Between is about Adoni, a teenager whose pain drives her headlong into another world. This is a timeless young adult, genre fiction setup, which makes you think you pretty much know what’s coming–only you don’t. Adoni’s new world is surprising, as frightening as it is beautiful, and the battles (both emotional and physical) that she wages there make for riveting, sometimes heartbreaking reading. This is a powerful and exciting debut, and I can’t wait for Book Two." –Caitlin Sweet, author of The Pattern Scars and A Telling of Stars
“Luckily for us all, [with The Myth In Distance] Challenger has given us a stirring encore to the tale she started in The Voices In Between, and has done so brilliantly, with feeling. Her words, her characters, sing on the page, and thrill you to your bones until the final note. Sonorous, moving, and with an authenticity rarely seen. Or heard.” –S.M. Beiko, author of The Lake and the Library and Scion of the Fox
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