Novels by Narine Abgaryan, Brenda Lozano, and Wallace Stegner, and graphic novels by Mimi Pond and Zuo Ma

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On Friday, just past noon, after the sun had rolled past its lofty zenith and begun sliding sedately toward the western edge of the valley, Anatolia Sevoyants lay down to breathe her last.
—From Three Apples Fell from the Sky, a novel by Narine Abgaryan, translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden (Oneworld Publications, 2020). Originally published in Russian as С неба упали три яблока by AST Publishers, Moscow, in 2015.

On the morning of January 22, 1946, Gloria Felipe left the house wearing a pale blue dress with a matching bolero jacket and a navy hat; she carried a white purse under one arm and with the other held the hand of her daughter, the only one of her five children still too young to attend school. Little Gloria Miranda Felipe had turned two just three weeks earlier and that morning had gone with her mother to drop her siblings off in a new white dress with yellow flowers embroidered on the chest, made especially for her by her grandmother Ana María as a birthday gift.
—From Mothers, a novel by Brenda Lozano, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary (Catapult, 2025). 

Sally is still sleeping. I slide out of bed and go barefooted across the cold wooden floor. The calendar, as I pass it, insists that it is not the one I remember. It says, accurately, that it is 1972, and that the month is August. 
          The door creaks as I ease it open. Keen air, gray light, gray lake below, gray sky through the hemlocks whose tops reach well above the porch. More than once, in summers past, Sid and I cut down some of those weedlike trees to let more light into the guest cottage. All we did was destroy some individuals, we never discouraged the species. The hemlocks like this steep shore. Like other species, they hang on to their territory.
—From Crossing to Safety, a novel by Wallace Stegner (Random House, 1987).  

I had no practice at [breaking up with someone], so I did it over the phone. / My mom and my brother hated me. I didn't care. / That song had stopped! / I was so relieved . . . / that I went out and slept with the first whacked-out hippie I could find.
—From The Customer Is Always Wrong, a graphic novel by Mimi Pond (Drawn & Quarterly, 2017). 

Actually, all of this will be demolished. / There's going to be a factory here and the government is buying the land. Everyone's adding floors to their houses so they'll get more compensation. / You see those high-rises on the hill? Everyone will relocate there. 
—From Night Bus, a graphic novel by Zuo Ma, translated from the Mandarin by Orion Martin (Drawn & Quarterly, 2021). Originally published in Mandarin by Paper Farm Publishing. This omnibus volume was originally published as two separate books: Walk, a short story anthology (2013) and Night Bus, a graphic novel (2018). It helps to know that going in.