Fishing for Tigers

by Emily Maguire

  EMILY MAGUIRE

  Emily Maguire is the author of four novels: Fishing for Tigers, Smoke in the Room, The Gospel According to Luke and Taming the Beast – as well as Princesses and Pornstars and Your Skirt’s Too Short, works of non-fiction. Her articles and essays on sex, religion, culture and literature have been published widely, including in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Observer.

  Also by Emily Maguire

  FICTION

  Taming the Beast

  The Gospel According to Luke

  Smoke in the Room

  NON-FICTION

  Princesses and Pornstars

  Your Skirt’s Too Short

  Emily Maguire

  Taming the Beast

  Sarah Clark’s life is irrevocably changed at the age of fourteen when her English teacher, Mr Carr, seduces her after class. Their affair is illegal, passionate and dangerous – a vicious meeting of minds and bodies. But when Mr Carr’s wife finds out, he is forced to choose, and moves with his family to another city. From that day on, Sarah’s life is defined by a series of meaningless, self-abasing sexual encounters, hoping with each man that she will experience the same delicious feelings she had with Mr Carr. Seven years later, he walks back into her life and once again she is drawn into the destructive relationship. Is Sarah strong enough to finally ‘tame the beast’?

  Praise for Taming the Beast

  ‘Powerful and compelling.’

  KIRKUS REVIEWS

  ‘Sections of the book pulse with sexual energy . . . Maguire keeps the prose crackling and the dialogue lively from the first page to the last.’

  PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  ‘It was a refreshing shock to encounter Maguire’s vibrantly voracious Sarah . . . Maguire’s writing is forthright, emotionally open and intellectually curious.’

  THE AGE

  Emily Maguire

  The Gospel According to Luke

  Aggie Grey is a jaded sexual health counsellor under fire from a group of crazed fundamentalists. Pastor Luke Butler is young, idealistic and out to capture the hearts and minds of Sydney’s disaffected youth. His first order of business is to shut down Aggie’s clinic. Caught in the crossfire is sixteen-year-old Honey – pregnant, battered and ready to cling to whatever hope is offered. While Aggie and Luke fight over the fate of Honey’s unborn child, they discover deep and surprising connections. But the fundamentalists have other ideas and soon all three are drawn into a conflict with catastrophic consequences.

  Praise for The Gospel According to Luke:

  ‘[This] book asks important questions and there’s more than enough fun between the covers to tempt the most jaded reader.’

  THE AUSTRALIAN

  ‘Maguire is a master of her craft; her prose is sharp and full of imagery and her dialogue rings true.’

  THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW

  ‘This suspense-fuelled tale becomes a deeper exploration of the strange places humans go to look for love.’

  THE BIG ISSUE (UK)

  Emily Maguire

  Smoke in the Room

  Nights were okay if she distracted herself with what CDs she wanted or how to find the money for more grog. With sex and shops and food and TV commercials. With a sad man and his corny tattoos. The stuff of life was all distraction, and distraction allowed her to get on with the stuff of life. But nobody stays distracted. The song ends and the man sleeps and the alcohol wears off and there it is; the window, the truck, the bread knife in its stay-sharp sheath.

  Katie Lewis is a little screwed up. She can’t help complicating things – in particular, relationships. But when Adam, the displaced American, and Graeme, the weary martyr, land on her doorstep, salvation may be at hand.

  Over one sultry summer, this unlikely cast of three will wrestle with some of life’s most poignant questions: how to live, how to love, and how to stay cool when all around you burns . . .

  First published 2012 in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  Copyright © Emily Maguire 2012

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Maguire, Emily, 1976–

  Fishing for tigers / Emily Maguire.

  9781742610832 (pbk.)

  A823.4

  EPUB format: 9781743283677

  Online format: 9781743283660

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Extract from Huyn Sanh Thong’s The Tale of Kieu reproduced with the permission of the publisher.

  Typeset by Post Pre-press Australia

  Cover design by Trisha Garner

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