Noa Callaway is our powerhouse author, with forty million books in print around the world. She is also the rare publishing phenomenon who doesn’t do publicity. You can’t google Noa’s author photo nor contact her online. You’ll never read a T magazine piece about the antique telescope in her Fifth Avenue penthouse. She declines all invitations for champagne whenever her books hit the list, though she lives 3.4 miles from our office. In fact, the only soul I know who’s actually met Noa Callaway is my boss, Noa’s editor, Alix de Rue.

And yet, you know Noa Callaway. You’ve seen her window displays in airports. Your aunt’s book club is reading her right now. Even if you’re the type who prefers The Times Literary Supplement over The New York Times Book Review, at the very least, you’ve Netflix and chilled Fifty Ways to Break Up Mom and Dad. (That’s Noa’s third novel but first movie adaptation, meme-famous for that scene with the turkey baster.) Over the past ten years, Noa Callaway’s heart-opening love stories have become so culturally pervasive that if they haven’t made you laugh, and cry, and feel less alone in a cruel and oblivious world, then you should probably check to see whether you’re dead inside.

With no public face behind Noa Callaway’s name, those of us in the business of publishing her novels feel a special pressure to go the extra mile. It makes us do crazy things. Like drop two grand on helium balloons filled with floating angel food cake.

Meg assured me that when our guests pop these balloons at the end of my toast this evening, the shower of cake and edible confetti will be worth every penny that came out of my group’s budget.

Assuming they haven’t gone missing.

“Zany Lanie.” Joe from our mailroom pops his head inside my office and gives me an air fist bump.

“Joe, my bro,” I quip back automatically, as I’ve been doing every day for the past seven years. “Hey, perfect timing—have you seen four big boxes of signed books arrive from Noa Callaway’s office?”

“Sorry.” He shakes his head. “Just this for you.”

As Joe sets down a stack of mail on my desk, I fire off a diplomatic text to Noa Callaway’s longtime assistant, and my occasional nemesis, Terry.

Terry is seventy, steel-haired, tanklike, and ever ready to shut down any request that might interfere with Noa’s process. Meg and I call her the Terrier because she barks but rarely bites. It’s always iffy whether simple things—like getting Noa to sign a couple hundred books for an event—will actually get done.