Meet Della Carmichael, owner of a cooking school in Santa Monica, California, and star of a new cable TV cooking show. To promote "In the Kitchen With Della," Della enters a cake-baking contest, which is also being filmed as a TV reality show. But she soon discovers that cakes aren't the only things being "iced." DEATH TAKES THE CAKE includes recipes at the back of the book, including the recipe for anew cake that "Della" (actually author Melinda Wells) had to create in order to enter the contest. Also, in this second book in the series, relationships between the characters begin to deepen.