Sara Sligar Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Sara Sligar is an American published author. You can pronounce her last name as rhyming with the world ‘tiger’. In addition to being a writer, she is also an academic and has the degrees and research to prove it.

Her home base is in the city of Los Angeles. There she teaches at the University of Southern California as a postdoctoral fellow as part of their Society of Fellows, teaching students creative writing as well as English. She does research on twentieth and twenty-first century American film, fiction, and television. She has an academic book project where she goes over the development of the genre of legal procedural placed in the context of the American criminal procedure’s historical changes. She describes it as being similar to a ‘pre-history of Law & Order’ (referring to the television show produced by Dick Wolf).

Sligar attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated with her Ph.D. in the subject of English. She would also go on to attend the University of Cambridge, graduating with her master’s degree in history. She also received her B.A. in French and English from Amherst College.

When she has free time, she enjoys hanging out with her rescue dogs. When she isn’t doing that, she tries her hand at making pottery with admittedly ‘deeply mediocre’ results at times. She also has daydreams about going on Nailed It!, a television show about trying your hand at do it yourself baking and decorating projects with mixed success, and showing the world her own uniquely terrible cake decorating skills.

She has had her work published in a variety of places, including The Hairpin, Quartz, and McSweeney’s. Her first fictional novel published came out in 2020 from MCD Books along with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. The book focuses on the tale of an archivist that is obsessed with the strange death of a photographer. The fixation threatens to topple over the new life that she started in the northern California area.

Take Me Apart is the debut novel from author Sara Sligar. This is a book that draws the reader in like no other. Author Araminta Hall calls it a visceral thriller, the type of book that tackles gaslighting as well as women’s treatment in society that made her feel a variety of emotions. Much was the same for author Angie Kim, who loved this book to the point that she chose to turn her phone off, cancel her responsibilities, and read through the entire book in just one sitting. If you are looking for an engrossing thriller suspense novel and you were a fan of Gone Girl, this is a great potential pick for you that you have just got to check out.

Readers get to meet the main character of Kate Aitken in this story, but this story started long before that. Miranda Brand was a famous photographer that had made it to the top. She had achieved what so many artists dream of, fame and recognition and respect for her work. Her career was actually at the highest that it had ever been and was likely to keep on going, propelling her to ever greater heights. Then, of course, it all changed.

As it so frequently happens, the change was not for the better. Miranda died, and her death was a mysterious one. Someone so high profile could be taken down and with no one knowing why, it was a captivating case. Callinas, California was particularly affected by it, the news rolling through and feeling like shock waves affecting everyone that had heard of the famed artist.

It has been years later and in the decades that have passed, the shock value of Miranda Brand’s death faded considerably. But even though time has gone on, it doesn’t mean that this case has closed or it has lost any of its emotional punch. The photographer’s surviving son, Theo, wants to have his mom’s work archived along with her personal effects. To do so, he has hired Kate Aitken, a former journalist.

Perhaps he knows that this will open up old wounds that have nearly healed, but it’s a cost that he is clearly willing to take on. Kate takes on the gig and does her best right from the start. There is a lot of material to work with, so much so that she feels that she is constantly making her way through a huge maze of it as she tries to sort through things.

Along the way, she’s dealing with details of her private life and even rumors of what went on. Slowly she is able to draw something together, putting pieces in their place that are quickly joining up to form an intimate portrait. One of an artist that was ambitious and vibrant, but also a woman that was having a tough time dealing with everything on her plate. Miranda was a wife and a mother, as well as a climbing artist. Together, it appeared to be a heavy collective load to carry.

She’s supposed to be investigating a mystery, but as it turns out, Kate is her own mystery as well. She’s hiding secrets that perhaps should not get out. Kate’s fairly certain she’s attracted to Theo, her client and the artist’s son. She’s already had a burgeoning curiosity about him and his mother. But when she unexpectedly finds the photographer’s old diary, what started out as interest is quickly evolving into obsession.

Can Kate get a handle on her fixation with her subject? Is her fascination natural or the symptom of something deeper? This is a young woman that is only doing her job, but is there something within this former journalist that makes her susceptible to the dramatic and obsessing over things?

What will she do about her attraction to Theo, and will he be happy by how invested she is in the life and secrets of his mother? Find out by picking up a copy of this psychological thriller where the twists and turns never end and discover what really happened to the famed photographer by reading Sara Sligar’s Take Me Apart.