With the New Year here, it’s time for my annual post focusing on some of the novels that will reach round-number anniversaries in the next 12 months.

I’ll work chronologically backwards, starting with 1998-published books turning 25 in 2023. I’ll only mention novels I’ve read, except for two of which I’ve only seen the movie version.

Not sure this qualifies, but Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was first published in the United States a quarter-century ago, in 1998. That novel initially came out in the United Kingdom the previous year under the title of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’sStone — kicking off J.K. Rowling’s outstanding, wildly popular seven books of wizard world-building. The second novel, HarryPotter and the Chamber of Secrets, made its page-turning debut everywhere in ’98.

Perhaps the best novel of ’98 was The Poisonwood Bible, about a very problematic American missionary in…