What happened, nobody saw, but everybody knew… Why should blood on the floor make anyone mad against automobiles and telephones and desks. Why. This is what happened.’

Written in 1933, immediately following the publication of the wildly successful Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor is one of Stein’s most avant-garde pieces of writing, taking the murder mystery genre and working it masterfully into a Modernist mould.

Based in part on truth, the narrative is set in – and written from – the country house where Stein and Toklas were living in rural France, and describes the strange death of their acquaintance Madame Pernollet. The novella takes the mystery and warps it, shot through as it is with the comings and goings of servants and the unstoppable march of modern life. Reissued as part of Renard’s accessible series of Stein’s work, this is the perfect edition for lovers of the Modernist icon’s work, and a new generation that is just as fascinated by crime and detection.