Skip content
Celebrate indie bookstores with our limited-time sale! Shop the sale
The Rule of One by Ashley Saunders & Leslie Saunders
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
IBD balloon logo

Shop the sale

In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!

Shop now

The Rule of One

$35.99

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Karissa Vacker

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 8 hours 35 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

In their world, telling the truth has become the most dangerous crime of all.

In the near-future United States, a one-child policy is ruthlessly enforced. Everyone follows the Rule of One. But Ava Goodwin, daughter of the head of the Texas Family Planning Division, has a secret—one her mother died to keep and her father has helped to hide for her entire life.

She has an identical twin sister, Mira.

For eighteen years Ava and Mira have lived as one, trading places day after day, maintaining an interchangeable existence down to the most telling detail. But when their charade is exposed, their worst nightmare begins. Now they must leave behind the father they love and fight for their lives.

Branded as traitors, hunted as fugitives, and pushed to discover just how far they’ll go in order to stay alive, Ava and Mira rush headlong into a terrifying unknown.

Hailing from the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, Ashley Saunders and Leslie Saunders are award-winning filmmakers and twin sisters who honed their love of storytelling at The University of Texas at Austin. While researching The Rule of One, they fell in love with America's national parks, traveling the path of Ava and Mira. The sisters can currently be found with their Boston terriers in sunny Los Angeles, exploring hiking trails and drinking entirely too much yerba mate. Visit them at www.thesaunderssisters.com or follow them on Instagram @saunderssisters.

IBD balloon logo

Shop the sale

In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!

Shop now

Reviews

The Rule of One is about family, adventure, self-discovery, and the search for space to belong. [It] hooks readers with the idea of a one-child policy in the future United States and a tightly held secret.” Los Angeles Times

“Ava and Mira’s world is an all-too-believable mix of advanced technology and environmental collapse. In their debut, Saunders and Saunders, themselves twins, lend an authentic voice to the girls’ first-person narration…Readers are in for a fast-paced ride, poised for a sequel, as the twins embrace their father’s call, in the words of Walt Whitman, to ‘resist much, obey little.’” Kirkus Reviews

“A suspenseful and timely dystopian thriller that should appeal to both adults and teens.” Library Journal

Expand reviews
Celebrate indie bookstores with our limited-time sale! Shop the sale