Corinna Chapman was once a high profile accountant and banker. That is until she walked out on the money market and her dismissive and unpleasant husband James, threw aside her briefcase, and doffed her kitten heels forever. Now she is a baker working in her own business, Earthly Delights, in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, Australia. Corinna is living in an eccentric building on the Roman model called Insula, which has eight stories, sixteen apartments, and a lot of strange and interesting people. These include a retired professor of classics, Dionysius Monk; a Dutch gardener named Trudi; Mr. and Mrs. Pemberthy and their rotten little doggie, Traddles; a pair of disgustingly thin, would-be soapie stars Goss and Kylie; and a jobbing witch, Meroe of The Sibylas Cave. Corinna is quite content with her cat Horatio and her shop until a junkie falls half dead on her grate, a gorgeous sabra stalks along her alley and tells her that she is beautiful, and she starts receiving threatening letters accusing her of being a scarlet woman.