The Breaking Wave is one of Nevil Shute's most poignant and psychologically suspenseful novels, set in the years just after World War II.

Sidelined by a wartime injury, fighter pilot Alan Duncan reluctantly returns to his parents' remote sheep station in Australia to take the place of his brother Bill, who died a hero in the war. But his homecoming is marred by the suicide of his parents' parlormaid, of whom they were very fond. Alan soon realizes that the dead young woman is not the person she pretended to be. Upon discovering that she had served in the Royal Navy and participated along with his brother in the secret build-up to the Normandy invasion, Alan sets out to piece together the tragic events and the lonely burden of guilt that unravelled one woman's life. In the process of finding the answer to the mystery, he realizes how much he had in common with this woman he never knew and how "a war can go on killing people long after it's all over."

• We started tracking this book on March 9, 2012.
• This book was $11.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 138 times in the past 5,023 days.
• The current price of this book is $4.99 last checked one day ago.
• The lowest price to date was $4.99 last reached on December 7, 2025.
• This book has been $4.99 11 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on August 17, 2018.
• This book has been $14.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• This book is currently at its lowest price since we started tracking it.

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 258 Pages
• File Size: 682 KB