Although she’s taken an interest in Irish embroidery, Marcy Singer can’t help but abandon her needlecraft when handsome local brewer Todd finds himself accused of murder. Both Todd and his friend Blake’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and neither is talking about what happened. Marcy is determined to stitch together some luck from more than a few four-leaf clovers and prove that the culprit was someone else…
Cupid’s arrow is making its way to Tallulah Falls, Oregon, bringing lots of business to Marcy Singer’s embroidery specialty shop. But the course of true love never has run smoothly….
St. Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and residents are in a romantic frame of mind. In fact, one blushing bride has commissioned Marcy to embellish her mother’s vintage wedding gown with jewels for her Valentine’s Day wedding. Marcy is delighted–until she finds that the worst bridezillas have nothing on this bride to be. When the bride’s future mother-in-law is found stabbed to death outside Marcy’s shop, matters go from bad to worse….
They say sugar is bad for your teeth, but can it actually kill you? The Brea Ridge police seem to think so when they find cake decorator Daphne Martin wielding an oversized plastic toothbrush over a dentist’s dead body. Daphne moved back to her small Virginia hometown just months ago to open her Daphne’s
Delectable Cakes business and already she’s been mixed up in murder. Now she’s got to prove her sweet innocence again.
After hours of police questioning, Daphne returns home to find Elvis Presley in her driveway. She’s certain she’s hallucinating until the leather-clad hunk orders up a pink Cadillac cake for a convention of the Elvis impersonators. Daphne accepts, but her reporter-boyfriend Ben is suspicious of Elvis’s intentions. Does the King want to make Daphne his confectionery queen? Or is the convention a ruse for a more sinister operation? Daphne’s own investigation into Dr. Bainsworth’s murder, meanwhile, reveals the dentist made as many enemies as he did fillings. Just about anyone could have done him in, but it’s up to Daphne to find the killer—and finish Elvis’s cake—before she’s the one singing “Jailhouse Rock.”
In the second book of the series, trouble strikes when an elderly woman brings an antique piece of embroidery to Marcy…and promptly dies of unnatural causes. Marcy is convinced the sampler holds a clue to an even older crime and that somebody may have killed to hide it. Now it’s up to Marcy and her pals–two-legged and four-legged–to unravel this mystery.
This book is a rerelease of the book originally published by Bell Bridge and contains new scenes and an additional section titled “Daphne’s Kitchen.”
When the meanest gossip in Brea Ridge, Yodel Watson, dies mysteriously, suspicions turn to recently returned Virginia native and cake decorator Daphne Martin. But all she did was deliver a spice cake with cream cheese frosting–and discover Yodel’s dead body. Now, Daphne must get her hands dirty to help solve the murder and clear her good name before things get any worse. But the small town is brimming with people who had good reason to kill Yodel–and Daphne’s entire family is among them.
When Marcy Singer opens an embroidery specialty shop in quaint Tallulah Falls, Oregon, she throws a soiree and a Stitch-In. Soon, Marcy’s sign- up sheet for embroidery classes fills up and everyone in town seems willing to raise a glass-or a needle-to support the newly-opened Seven Year Stitch.
Then Marcy finds the shop’s previous tenant dead in the store-room, a message scratched with a tapestry needle on the wall beside him. Now Marcy’s shop has become a crime scene, and she’s the prime suspect. She’ll have to find the killer before someone puts a final stitch in her.

For the second time in as many months, Daphne Martin finds herself telling a police officer, “I just delivered the cake.”
Several people became sick at Brea Ridge Pharmaceuticals’ annual holiday party for its employees, and one–Fred Duncan–died. Fred’s mother insists on Daphne’s help in learning why Fred died; and since none of the food has yet been exonorated, Daphne feels compelled to find out what made everyone so ill. She’s pretty sure it wasn’t her cake, but she can’t be certain until the police complete the lab results. Was this an accident? Or did someone set out to kill Fred?
Book Two – The Daphne Martin Cake Decorating Mysteries
Gayle Trent
November 2009 * Trade Paperback * 235 Pages * $14.95 * ISBN: 978-0-9841258-4-5
Cozy Food Mystery
Want to learn more about the cake decorating character, Daphne? Take a look at Gayle’s blog posts…