An author of a Christian novel is accusing a third-grade teacher for plagiarizing her romance novel and adding graphic sex scenes to the text.

Prolific Christian novelist Rachel Ann Nunes filed a lawsuit in a federal Utah court late in August claiming that Tiffanie Rushton violated the copyright of her book, A Bid for Love.

Rushton allegedly used passages and plot from the novel to create a book called, The Auction Deal.

Nunes said that Rushton cut and pasted large sections from an electronic copy of her book.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that according to the lawsuit, Rushton wrote an e-mail to a reader claiming she had been given permission by Nunes years ago to use copyrighted text.

A Bid for Love was written in 1998 and is about two art dealers who fell in love after competing for an Indian Buddha statue.

The book was first published by a Utah-based publisher and was later released as an electronic book version on Amazon.

Rushton's manuscript The Auction Deal is a love story of an art dealer and a successful gallery owner competing to get a rare statue at a prestigious auction house.

The Auction Deal has the same plot as the Christian novel, A Bid for Love. The difference only is that the plagiarized version contains adult sexual content and language.

"All the characters are the same, lines throughout and the plot. It is really hard for me to read it," Nunes said Tuesday. "I feel like my life has been stolen." She is also disturbed at the sex scenes saying that a character was named after one of her seven children.

The lawsuit asks for damages of $150,000 as well as attorney's fees. It also wants Rushton to be prohibited from posting comments under assumed names and a retraction of postings related to Nunes.

An e-mail exchange between Nunes and Rushton revealed that Rushton used the pen name Sam Taylor Mullens as she is a Mormon and her extended family members are unaware that she writes about sex, said Nunes.