Patrick, a fifty-year-old professor, drinker and womaniser, has been given six months to live. In a rural part of Cambridgeshire, a teenager dies in a motorcycle accident. When his heart is transplanted into Patrick's chest, the lives of two strangers are forever conjoined. Patrick makes a good recovery, but has the odd feeling that his old life 'won't have him'. Patrick becomes bewitched by the story of his heart, ever more curious about the boy who donated it, his ancestors, the countryside he grew up in. What exactly has Patrick been given? The Tell-Tale Heart is a mesmerising, atmospheric novel by one of our most critically acclaimed contemporary writers - a novelist whose beguiling and mysterious stories intrigue and delight while exploring important questions of who we are and the forces that shape us. This is Jill Dawson at the height of her powers.