Macmillan has created a new online community for crime fiction and nonfiction readers, CriminalElement.com.

Here’s more from the press release: “At launch there will be excerpts, original fiction and articles by authors Joseph Finder, Steve Hamilton, Rosemary Harris, Charles Ardai, Luis Alberto Urrea and more…CriminalElement.com is ‘publisher neutral,’ meaning that it will include author participation from all publishers and other content creators, and is not exclusive to Macmillan authors.”

Crime writers from any publisher can submit original short stories and pre-release excerpts to senior manager Liz Edelstein. This site will also have a Facebook page and Twitter page.

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Today Hard Case Crime announced they will publish a lost novel by Donald E. Westlake. You can read a free sample at this link.

Hard Case will release the novel in 2012, the second hardcover title ever on the publisher’s list. Westlake passed away in 2009. Over his long career, he won the  Edgar Allan Poe Award three times.

Here’s more about the novel, from the release: “[Westlake]  decided not to publish the novel when, after completing it, he saw Martin Scorcese’s 1983 film The King of Comedy, whose premise also involves the kidnapping of a television comedian … [it] takes its title from the closing line of the tragic opera Pagliacci, and though the novel is about a comedian it is not itself a comedy. Rather, it is a high-tension suspense story focusing on the FBI’s efforts to capture the terrorists, the victim’s struggle to stay alive, and the kidnappers’ conflicts as their plans begin to go awry.”