December 31 in Fiction

Literature Harry Potter (1997)

12/31/1926  · J.K. Rowling

December 31, 1926 is the birthday of Tom Marvolo Riddle — born on New Year's Eve to a Muggle father and a dying witch mother in a London orphanage, abandoned at birth, and destined to become Lord Voldemort. That the most feared dark wizard in history shares a birthday with the world's largest annual celebration of optimism is the kind of irony Tom Riddle would not have appreciated.

Literature Tuesday Nights in 1980 (2016)

12/31/1979  · Molly Prentiss

On New Year's Eve 1979, art dealer Winona George throws her annual party at her art-filled downtown Manhattan loft — welcoming in the 1980s with the neighborhood's painters, critics, and collectors. It is the party at which the art world James Bennett covers for the Times is most fully, raucously alive, the night before the decade's tragedies begin arriving.