The day begins like any other Saturday for beautiful Parisian restaurateur Aurélie Bredin, until she wakes up to find her apartment empty - her boyfriend gone off with another woman.

Heartbroken, Aurélie walks the streets of Paris in the rain, finally seeking refuge in a little bookshop in the Île Saint-Louis, where she's drawn to a novel titled The Smiles of Women by obscure English author Robert Miller. She buys it and takes it home, but when she begins to read she's astonished: The Smiles of Women can't possibly be about her restaurant, about her. Except, it is.

Flattered and curious to know more, Aurélie attempts to get in touch with the reclusive Mr Miller, but it proves to be a daunting task. His French publishers seem determined to keep his identity secret, and while the Editor-in-Chief André Chabanais is happy to give Aurélie his time, he seems mysteriously unwilling to help her find her author.

Is Robert Miller really so shy, or is there something that André isn't telling Aurélie?

Nicolas Barreau is both the name of an acclaimed Parisian writer of mixed parentage, who studied at the Sorbonne and worked in a bookshop on the Rive Gauche... and a pseudonym concealing the identity of a mysterious literary figure, unreachable except through his editor.