THE TRAIN TO PARIS

After a holiday in Madrid with his girlfriend Sophie, which hasn't gone well, Lawrence Williams takes the train back to Paris where he is studying art history. He's twenty, and discovering how to see the world, which means he doesn't mind too much when he gets stranded at the border.

And that's when Élodie Lavelle in her white leopard print dress enters his field of vision. She might be twice his age but she's amused by the boy's earnest charm, and decides to entertain herself by educating him in the rules of her society. She takes him to Biarritz for an evening in the grand style that he will never forget.

But Élodie has not counted on what Lawrence might teach her in return, or how much their unlikely encounter will mark them both. Sebastian Hampson's THE TRAIN TO PARIS is an unexpected, compulsively readable love story.

Sebastian Hampson was born in 1992 in Auckland, New Zealand. He grew up in Wellington, has lived in Europe, and is currently studying art history and literature at Victoria University. THE TRAIN TO PARIS is his first novel.