Stranger in the Woods

Photographer Isla Wilson thinks she has landed the job of her career: a month documenting the sprawling Scottish Highlands property of celebrated architect Alban McGregor and his wife Jessica. She arrives to find a house arranged around an absence. Two years ago the McGregors' daughter Elodie was taken and died in a playhouse deep in the woods, and Alban has refused to have it torn down. A photograph of it hangs on his wall.

The longer Isla stays, the less the McGregors' account of that day holds together, and the more it becomes clear that the town has agreed on a version of events rather than arrived at one.

Anni Taylor builds the dread out of landscape and silence: mist, snow, and a family that will not answer a direct question. By the time Isla gets close to what happened to Elodie, the snow has closed the roads, and the only people who know she is there are the ones she has learned not to trust.