Whalefall cover art

Whalefall

A Novel

Preview
Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Whalefall

By: Daniel Kraus
Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
Try Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $26.81

Buy Now for $26.81

About this listen

Soon to be a major motion picture from 20th Century Studios

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Book Riot, Shelf Awareness, and NPR

The Martian meets 127 Hours in this “astoundingly great” (Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and scientifically accurate thriller about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.

Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year.

The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.

Suspenseful and cinematic, Whalefall is an “powerfully humane” (Owen King, New York Times bestselling author) thriller about a young man who has given up on life…only to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and unlikely of places.
Adventure Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Suspense Thriller & Suspense

Critic Reviews

"Narrator Kirby Heyborne embodies the gruesomeness and terror and beauty in Daniel Kraus’s story. Listeners will feel its intensity in the pit of their stomachs. Teenage scuba diver Jay Gardiner is consumed by guilt as he seeks to find the remains of his father, who died by suicide, in the Pacific Ocean. As Jay searches the ocean’s depths, he is swallowed by a sperm whale. As the story switches between key moments in Jay’s past and the rapidly decreasing air in his tanks, listeners will feel like they themselves are gasping for air. Heyborne’s performance robustly expands Kraus’s tale, and it is divine."
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.