Audiobooks Like The Thirteenth Tale

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Bianca Amato and Jill Tanner split Diane Setterfield's gothic two-hander with voices that feel genuinely separate — Amato's biographer warm but probing, Tanner's aging author guarded and theatrical in a way that keeps the mystery alive across 16 atmospheric hours. The list reaches toward the same layered unease, with several award-winning picks and highly rated titles that share the novel's appetite for secrets told at a careful remove.

10 audiobooks for fans of The Thirteenth Tale

  1. 1
    Sunrise on the Reaping cover

    Sunrise on the Reaping

    The Hunger Games

    by Suzanne Collins

    Narrated by Jefferson White

    4.90 ABR Score (1.2M ratings)
    ★ 4.5 Goodreads (1.1M) ★ 4.85 Audible (32.5K)
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    Young Haymitch faces the brutal Quarter Quell with twice the usual tributes in this Hunger Games prequel. Jefferson White captures the desperation beautifully.

  2. 2
    My Friends cover

    My Friends

    by Fredrik Backman

    Narrated by Marin Ireland

    4.58 ABR Score (421.8K ratings)
    ★ 4.36 Goodreads (413.4K) ★ 4.64 Audible (8.5K)
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    Backman explores how four teenagers' friendship changes a stranger's life decades later, with Marin Ireland capturing every nuance of this deeply moving tale.

  3. 3
    The Buffalo Hunter Hunter cover

    The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

    by Stephen Graham Jones

    Narrated by Shane Ghostkeeper, Marin Ireland, Owen Teale

    4.12 ABR Score (49.3K ratings)
    ★ 3.99 Goodreads (47.6K) ★ 4.4 Audible (1.7K)
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    Three narrators share duties in Jones' latest horror, following characters caught between historical violence against buffalo hunters and contemporary supernatural vengeance across the American West.

  4. 4
    Saving Fish from Drowning cover

    Saving Fish from Drowning

    by Amy Tan

    Narrated by Amy Tan

    3.30 ABR Score (33.7K ratings)
    ★ 3.47 Goodreads (33.2K) ★ 3.45 Audible (495)
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    Amy Tan narrating her own deadpan ghost narrator is the perfect match: wry, precise, and weaving between comedy and heartbreak as tourists stumble through Burma with zero cultural awareness. Her voice makes the chaos feel intimate rather than chaotic.

  5. 5
    Theo of Golden cover

    Theo of Golden

    by Allen Levi

    Narrated by David Morse

    4.85 ABR Score (178.8K ratings)
    ★ 4.57 Goodreads (168.5K) ★ 4.89 Audible (10.3K)
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    A mysterious stranger buys pencil portraits in a small Southern town, with David Morse's weathered voice adding layers of intrigue to every encounter.

  6. 6
    Remarkably Bright Creatures cover

    Remarkably Bright Creatures

    by Shelby Van Pelt

    Narrated by Marin Ireland, Michael Urie

    4.83 ABR Score (1.4M ratings)
    ★ 4.36 Goodreads (1.3M) ★ 4.79 Audible (62.8K)
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    Marin Ireland and Michael Urie breathe warmth into this unlikely story about a widow who forms a bond with a giant Pacific octopus while cleaning the aquarium at night.

  7. 7
    The Correspondent cover

    The Correspondent

    by Virginia Evans

    Narrated by Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, Jeff Ebner, David Pittu, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Mark Bramhall, Petrea Burchard, Robert Petkoff, Kimberly Farr, Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Peter Ganim, Jade Wheeler, Various

    4.81 ABR Score (383.3K ratings)
    ★ 4.53 Goodreads (364.9K) ★ 4.8 Audible (18.3K)
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    Through discovered letters, the life story of a remarkable woman unfolds across decades of love, loss, war, and artistic passion. This epistolary novel examines how written words preserve and transform our understanding of both ordinary and extraordinary lives.

  8. 8
    The Great Alone cover

    The Great Alone

    by Kristin Hannah

    Narrated by Julia Whelan

    Why this book?

    Both novels weave atmospheric storytelling with deeply personal mysteries that unfold gradually, drawing listeners into richly layered narratives where family secrets and hidden truths drive the plot forward. Julia Whelan's immersive narration captures the same haunting, character-driven tension that makes *The Thirteenth Tale* so compelling, while the Alaskan wilderness setting provides a similarly gothic and isolating backdrop for psychological drama.

    4.79 ABR Score (1.3M ratings)
    ★ 4.46 Goodreads (1.2M) ★ 4.7 Audible (58.5K)
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    Julia Whelan captures both Alaska's brutal beauty and a family's desperate struggle when a volatile Vietnam vet moves them off-grid in 1974.

  9. 9
    Small Great Things cover

    Small Great Things

    Ruth Jefferson • Book 1

    by Jodi Picoult

    Narrated by Audra McDonald, Cassandra Campbell, Ari Fliakos

    4.74 ABR Score (478.4K ratings)
    ★ 4.36 Goodreads (444.3K) ★ 4.75 Audible (34.1K)
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    Three stellar narrators handle this explosive story of a Black nurse forbidden from touching a white supremacist couple's newborn with devastating emotional precision.

  10. 10
    The Storyteller cover

    The Storyteller

    by Jodi Picoult

    Narrated by Mozhan Marno, Jennifer Ikeda, Edoardo Ballerini, Suzanne Toren, Fred Berman

    4.57 ABR Score (299.1K ratings)
    ★ 4.3 Goodreads (278.1K) ★ 4.61 Audible (21.0K)
    More about this pick

    When an elderly man asks baker Sage to help him die as penance for his Nazi past, she must confront family history and impossible moral choices. Multiple narrators handle the interconnected timelines skillfully, from modern grief support groups to Holocaust survival stories.

How We Rank Audiobooks

Rankings are driven by listener ratings and review counts from Audible and Goodreads. Books with high ratings across a large number of listeners rank higher — a 4.5 with 50,000 ratings says more than a 4.8 with 200.

Unlike most book lists, we weight audiobook-specific factors: narrator performance, production quality, and how well a story translates to audio. A great book with a poor narration isn't a great audiobook.

We don't accept paid placements or prioritize new releases. These rankings reflect what listeners actually enjoy, not what's being promoted.

Rankings update periodically as new ratings come in and new titles are added to the collection.

Read our full ranking methodology →