Indigo Teen Staff Pick: April 2019

Welcome to my Indigo Teen Staff Pick of the Month blog post for April 2019! If you’ve been following my Instagram, you might have noticed that I’ve been posting about the Indigo Teen Staff Picks since November 2017. I started talking about these picks in January 2018, and have enjoyed discussing them with you all! Keep reading to see which book is this month’s Indigo Teen Staff Pick!

For those hearing about Indigo Teen Staff Pick of the Month for the first time, it’s a program run by Chapters/Indigo Books & Music Inc. in which 100 staff members read a number of teen and YA books and then vote for their pick of the month! Each monthly pick is announced by Chapters/Indigo at the beginning of each month, and each of the picks are kept secret until then! Isn’t that exciting? Please be sure to use #IndigoStaffPicks if you share anything about this on social media, or if you want to show off your own copy of a Teen Staff Picks book (in connection to this)!

Descendant of the Crane by Joan He

You can read the synopsis below, and get your own copy
at a reduced price on the Chapters / Indigo website this month!

Title: Descendant of the Crane
Author: Joan He
Type: Fiction
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Publisher: Albert Whitman Company
Published: April 9, 2019

Princess Hesina of Yan has always been eager to shirk the responsibilities of the crown, dreaming of an unremarkable life. But when her beloved father is found dead, she’s thrust into power, suddenly the queen of a surprisingly unstable kingdom. What’s more, Hesina believes that her father was murdered—and that the killer is someone close to her.

Hesina’s court is packed full of dissemblers and deceivers eager to use the king’s death for political gain, each as plausibly guilty as the next. Her advisers would like her to blame the neighboring kingdom of Kendi’a, whose ruler has been mustering for war. Determined to find her father’s actual killer, Hesina does something desperate: she enlists the aid of a soothsayer—a treasonous act, punishable by death, since magic was outlawed centuries ago.

Using the information provided by the sooth, and uncertain if she can trust her family, Hesina turns to Akira—a brilliant investigator who’s also a convicted criminal with secrets of his own. With the future of Yan at stake, can Hesina find justice for her father? Or will the cost be too high?

Joan He was born and raised in Philadelphia but still will, on occasion, lose her way. At a young age, she received classical instruction in oil painting before discovering that stories were her favorite kind of art. She studied psychology and Chinese history at the University of Pennsylvania and currently writes from a desk overlooking the city waterfront. Descendant of the Crane is her young adult debut. For updates, please sign up for her newsletter: http://eepurl.com/c5rvdL. For business related inquiries, please contact her literary agent, John Cusick of Folio Lit.