Excerpts from Southern Sweet Tarts a Novel by Laura James      Ivy Reid didn’t know where her ex-husband was.    So telling everyone that he was on the South Pole in a scientific station for the next five years instead of missing altogether wasn’t really lying. For all she knew, Jimmy could be on the South Pole. So technically, her explanation was a possible version of the truth.    He could also have been abducted by aliens or knocked off by the mob. Those were possible versions as well. Somehow, the science station rendition rolled off her tongue a little easier.   Charming Delilah   Computer techno geek, Carter Godfrey is returned to earth after his life is mistakenly cut short, only he’s returned in the body of a criminal. In order to clear his name, he needs documents the criminal’s spurned ex has, a woman whose new motto is “hell hash no fury like Delilah Fontaine.”    Carter Godfrey slowly came to realize he recognized the head lying on the road. It was his.    The carrot-colored hair, his mouth agape as if in permanent objection, the white skin that didn’t tan, dotted with freckles he thought would fade with time (they didn’t), complete with baby cheeks and his rim of a double chin. Which struck him odd. He’d never known if a double chin would continue to exist when one’s head was cut off.    What were his choices again? He couldn’t reason through with all the anxiety vibrating his thoughts.    “Time’s up,” he heard a voice say. “Are you in or out?” *    The fire choked, belching out gusts of smoke as if mocking Delilah. She leaned back from the barrel and breathed in clean air. When she’d decided to clean her apartment of all the last traces of her ex-insignificant old calendars, files, photographs, unpaired socks-she pictured raging flames licking her life clean, not this opinionated fire needling her guilt. Maybe it was a sign.    She rubbed her gloved hands together and pressed them against her cheeks. Cold, damp, wind with a razor’s edge, it was a typical January afternoon in Chicago. Probably the fire’s hesitancy wasn’t a sign telling her she shouldn’t burn Jonathan’s things, but a sign she needed lighter fluid.