Penguin Group (USA) has relaunched Dutton Guilt-Edged Mysteries as a digital imprint. Dutton editor-in-chief Ben Sevier will oversee the imprint.

Dutton Guilt-Edged Mysteries will publish original crime short stories and novellas as Penguin eSpecials. Every year, the imprint will publish “at least one writer” from Book Country‘s online fiction workshop community.

Two projects in the works include Murder in Mumbai, a debut novella by NPR news editor Krishnadev Calamur and an original Dismas Hardy story by prolific crime novelist John Lescroart. Follow this link for more details on submission guidelines.

Here’s more from the press release: “From 1947 to 1956, Dutton Guilt-Edged Mysteries was a pulp noir publisher that specialized in hardboiled detective fiction, including the work of noir icon Mickey Spillane, whose first seven Mike Hammer novels were published under the Guilt-Edged logo. The new program will be dedicated to publishing original crime short stories and novellas as Penguin eSpecials. The imprint will launch in Summer 2012 to coincide with the 65^th anniversary of the Guilt-Edged publication of Spillane’s first Mike Hammer novel, I, the Jury.”