Jaws
Contents (29)
“A SUPER-THRILLER!…
If you have any imagination at all, the book will give you the shivers.”
The New York Post
“From the opening chapter when a young woman plunges into the surf … and meets the 20-foot shark … the reader is hooked.”
Newsday
“Benchley keeps it moving, fulfills all expectations.… JAWS is lean, all sinew, everything directed toward a climax that is implanted on the retina from the very first sentence.”
New York Magazine
“To read the first few pages of Peter Benchley’s book is to be compelled to read them all as quickly as you can turn the pages.… A stunning book.”
Book World
“An eminently successful combination of adventure story and moral fable … The narrative is tense and absorbing, the characterization excellent, and the climactic shark hunt as exciting a sea story as one could want.”
Library Journal
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1974 and copyright renewed 2002 by Winifred W. Benchley
Introduction copyright © 2005 by Winifred W. Benchley
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
This work was originally published in hardcover by Doubleday & Company in 1974 and in paperback by Bantam in 1975.
Fawcett Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
PETER BENCHLEY is a registered trademark of Winifred W. Benchley. Purchase of this book should not be construed as granting any right or license to use the trademark without prior written permission.
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-82866-8
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part Two
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Three
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
eBook Bonus Content
Original Title Page of Jaws
Title Idea Brainstorm List
Letter from Peter Benchley to David Brown, Producer of the Film Version of Jaws
Photos from the Jaws Movie Set
“Great White: Deep Trouble”
“Gift From the Sea”
Dedication
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
Jaws was the offspring of a childhood passion.
Like millions of other children, I developed, early on, a fascination with sharks. Because I spent my summers on Nantucket, an island thirty miles out in the Atlantic, I was able to indulge my passion on a regular and continuing basis. In the 1940s and ’50s the waters around Nantucket were rich in wildlife, including sharks of many species: sand sharks, blue sharks, makos, and, though I didn’t know it at the time, great white sharks. When my father, my brother, and I would go fishing on windless days, we’d see the dorsal and tail fins of sharks crisscrossing the oil-calm surface. To me they spoke of the unknown and the mysterious, of invisible danger and mindless savagery.