Jaws is a novel by American writer Peter Benchley, published by Doubleday in 1974. It tells the story of a large great white shark that preys upon a small Long Island resort town and the three men who attempt to kill it. The novel grew out of Benchley's interest in shark attacks after he read about the exploits of Frank Mundus, a shark fisherman from Montauk, New York, in 1964. Doubleday commissioned Benchley to write the novel in 1971, a period when the writer worked as a freelance journalist.

Through a marketing campaign orchestrated by Doubleday and paperback publisher Bantam Books, Jaws was incorporated into many book sales clubs catalogues and attracted media interest. First published in February 1974, Jaws was a great success; the hardback remained on the bestseller list for 44 weeks and the subsequent paperback edition sold millions of copies, beginning in 1975. Although literary critics acknowledged the novel's effective suspense, reviews were generally mixed, with many finding Benchley's prose and characterizations amateurish and banal.

Film producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown read the novel before its publication and purchased the film rights. Steven Spielberg was selected to direct the movie adaptation, Jaws, released in June 1975. Spielberg's film omitted all of the novel's subplots and focused primarily on the shark and the characterizations of the three protagonists. The film version of Jaws is credited as the first summer blockbuster and was the highest-grossing film in motion picture history up to that time. Three sequels (with no involvement from Spielberg) followed the film, all of which were met with mixed to negative responses.

Jaws is set in the fictional town of Amity, a small, seaside resort located on the south shore of Long Island, halfway between Bridgehampton and East Hampton. One night, after her intoxicated date passes out on the beach, a young woman named Christine "Chrissy" Watkins skinny dips alone in the ocean where she is attacked and killed by a massive great white shark. The next morning, her partially eaten remains are found washed up on the beach and the coroner concludes she was the victim of a shark attack. Amity Police Chief Martin Brody then orders the beaches closed, but he is overruled by mayor Larry Vaughan and the town's selectmen who fear damage to summer tourism, Amity's main source of commerce. With the collusion of Harry Meadows, editor of the local newspaper, news of the attack is kept quiet.

A few days later, the shark kills a young boy and an elderly man within half an hour of each other. Ben Gardner, a local fisherman, is hired to catch the shark but he disappears at sea. Brody and his deputy, Leonard Hendricks, discover Gardner's deserted boat anchored off-shore, covered with large bite holes, one of which has a large shark tooth stuck in it. The boy's mother and Gardner's widow angrily blame the deaths on Brody for not closing the beaches after they learn of the earlier attack on Chrissy Watkins. Wracked by guilt, Brody orders the beaches closed and has Meadows investigate Vaughan's business affairs to find out why he is so determined to keep them open. Meadows soon discovers that the mayor is heavily in debt to the Mafia who have a great deal of money invested in Amity real estate and are pressuring Vaughan to keep the beaches open in order to protect their investments; if Amity's market value should fall, Vaughan stands to lose everything, including, possibly, his life. Meadows also recruits Matt Hooper, a young, affluent ichthyologist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for help on dealing with the shark. When shown the tooth found on Gardner's boat, Hooper determines it to be from an unusually large great white shark.

Meanwhile, Ellen Brody, the Chief's wife, is suffering from depression and lamenting the loss of her youth and the privileged lifestyle she had before becoming a wife and mother. Coincidentally, when Ellen was a teenager, she dated Hooper's older brother a few years before marrying Brody. Ellen becomes fixated on Hooper as a link to the past she desperately longs for. After Hooper attends a dinner party at the Brody's, Ellen, intent on recapturing her juvenescence and joie de vivre, decides to seduce him. The following morning, she telephones Hooper at his hotel and invites him to meet her for lunch at a restaurant several miles away from Amity. At the restaurant, the two have several drinks and begin flirting with each other; following a sexually charged conversation, they go to a motel. Unable to reach neither Ellen nor Hooper by phone that afternoon, Brody begins to suspect they have had a liaison and he becomes obsessed and tormented by the thought.

After a week with no further attacks or sightings of the shark, Mayor Vaughan convinces Brody to reopen the beaches. By this time, news of the shark attacks have spread; tourists and the media flock to Amity for a glimpse of the killer shark. Brody sets up patrols along the beaches to watch for the fish. The shark returns and a teenage boy narrowly escapes another attack near the shore. Brody again closes the beaches and convinces the town's selectmen to hire Quint, an eccentric, crusty professional fisherman, to locate and kill the shark. Brody and Hooper set out with Quint on his boat, Orca, and the tension between the three men soon escalates. Quint considers Hooper a conceited, rich kid. Hooper is angry over Quint's methods when he disembowels a blue shark and uses an illegally caught unborn baby dolphin as bait. Brody has been wary of Hooper since his arrival in Amity, jealous of his youth, wealth and his connection to Ellen; his suspicions about Hooper and Ellen increase, as he discovers more circumstantial evidence that points to a possible tryst between them.

Their first day at sea is unproductive, but the three come in contact with the shark by the end of the second day. Upon seeing the fish for the first time and estimating the shark to be at least 20 ft (6.1 m) in length and weighing in at roughly 5,000 lb (2,300 kg), Hooper is visibly excited and in awe at the size of it.