The 2025
CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE
Photography by James Ransom
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More Felt Than Seen
Introducing the Center’s 2025 Christmas print by Tyler Gathro
For the 2025 commissioned holiday print to benefit the work of the Center, Tyler Gathro, recently awarded the Springville Museum's Best in Show prize (39th Annual Spiritual & Religious Show), created More Felt Than Seen, a quietly stunning image of a landscape printed in a shape that echoes a devotional archway.
Over the top of the work is a message punched in Braille that the artist wrote in his journal, "I keep returning to the thought that Christ is the Word made flesh--the Word I can touch. His presence feels like a message rising under my fingers, asking me to trust what I cannot see. Faith is this way: slow, patient, learned by touch. In the shadows, His light is still enough. Each mark, each moment, spells grace into my skin. Christ--Word made tangible, Light unquenchable--more felt than seen."
Tyler Gathro (American, born 1988)
More Felt Than Seen (2025)
Archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle, hand-punched Braille, 11 x 8 inches
Edition of 50, signed and numbered
$100 + shipping, unframed
“His presence feels like a message rising under my fingers, asking me to trust what I cannot see.”
More Original Prints Commissioned by the Center
Firmament Below
By Elise Wehle, 2024
Commissioned from artist Elise Wehle, Firmament Below is a cut-paper, limited edition print that evokes Christmas by juxtaposing the tangible elements of the earth (plants, our bodies, and the mortal world) with patterns that represent the spirit (a holy star and an offering with outstretched hands).
Elise Wehle (American, born 1986)
Firmament Below (2024)
Cut paper, 12.25 x 10.25 inches
Edition: 50, signed and numbered
$100 + $10 shipping, unframed
She made the holidays delicious
By Leslie Graff, 2023
To create the commissioned holiday print, She made the holidays delicious, Leslie Graff created a full-scale painting of a vintage-era hostess, with a 1950s wrapping paper pattern based on one her grandparents had in their Idaho fabric store, which they used to wrap her Christmas gifts every year. The artist was working on the painting as her grandmother passed away a month shy of 99 years old.
Leslie Graff (American, born 1976)
She made the holidays delicious (2023)
Risograph print on Mohawk Via Vellum, 9 x 12 inches (image size), 11 x 14 inches (paper size)
Edition: 50, signed and numbered
$100 + $10 shipping, unframed
Fiction & Poetry
By Todd Robert Petersen & Zoë Petersen
The Investigator/The Observer
In "The Investigator," a man stumbles upon an abandoned home in the Midwest after a global catastrophe. Inside, he finds food storage, scriptures, and journals left by a Latter-day Saint family—a culture he’s never encountered. The home becomes his refuge and awakens a spiritual journey that leads him to the ruins of the St. Louis Temple, where he leaves behind his own record before moving on. The author Todd Robert Petersen expanded his original story and created "The Observer"—a parallel narrative told through a journal and sketchbook brought to life by his daughter, illustrator Zoë Petersen. It follows a young woman traveling east in search of her parents, documenting her journey for the unborn child she carries. (Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, $24.95, softcover, 116 pp.)
Flames of Anarchy
By Jerry Borrowman
Novels based on history encourage readers to find contemporary relevance in the past. In the novel, Flames of Anarchy, Jerry Borrowman presicently spins a tale of the attempted assasination of Theodore Roosevelt, Pinkerton detectives, covert political schemers, and a general environment of chaos, lawlessness, politcial maneuvering, and shadow assocations. A 21st century reader can't help but see, in these fictional events, parallel events of our own day. (Shadow Mountain, $27.99, hardcover, 304 pp.)
Caught in the Middle
By Cassie M. Shiels
A novel of contemporary suspense, Caught in the Middle by Cassie M. Shiels begins with a young woman from Idaho now living in Los Angeles poised to join her boyfriend in a crime. Or will she trust a new stranger, Sam, who may or may not be able to save her? The author is exploring a genre of for Christian readers of romance and suspese. (Covenant Communications, $17.99, softcover, 304 pp.)
Royal Intrigue
By Traci Hunter Abramson
A best-selling novelist retired from the CIA, Traci Hunter Abramson knows suspense. Her latest is Royal Intrigue, a novel that starts with the assassination attempt of Princess Annabelle of Sereno. The sixth of a series, The Royals, the author blends real world tensions with flights of romantic fancy. (Covenant Communications, $17.69, softcover, 272 pp.)
‘93 Castrol
By Daniel Yen Tu
’93 Castrol is the debut feature-length screenplay by filmmaker Daniel Yen Tu. Set in mid-1990s Taiwan, the story follows three siblings on a high-stakes road trip: Da Ge, a small-time thief; Didi, an army deserter; and Xiaomei, a gifted aspiring fashion designer. When the brothers steal and attempt to sell a rare racecar to fund their sister’s education, the trio embarks on a journey from a southern fishing village to Taipei—pursued by gang rivals and haunted by a mysterious family curse. The volume includes the 87-page screenplay and 66 striking black and white photographs captured by the artist during a 2025 trip to Taiwan. (Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, $29.95, softcover, 236 pp.)
Julia: A Novel Inspired by the Extraordinary Life of Julia Child
By Heather B. Moore
We are a nation of foodies now. We talk about and consume delicacies from around the world regularly that our grandparents would not even recognize. That grand shift is due, in part, to authors and cooks like Julia Child, the subject of Heather B. Moore's novel based on her life, Julia. The book covers the twenty years leading up to her astounding PBS and publishsing success, a life of WWII and Cold War military service and global assignments. The ingredient in the novel that shines through most jucily is the main character's zest of living, her humor, and a boundless energy to share the foods she discovered and loved with the world. (Shadow Mountain, $27.99, hardcover, 384 pp.)
Song for My Left Ear, Song for My Right
By Jim Richards
Song for My Left Ear, Song for My Right is the first collection of poetry by Jim Richards. Nominated for Best New Poets and the Pushcart Prize, many of Ricards' poems in this volume have appeared in some of the nation's notable magazines and journals. And the poems themselves? They describe childhood, adolescence, memory, loss. They are full of humor and insight. They teem with new ways of looking at universal things; that is, the collection is a prime and new example of the power of poetry itself. (Finishing Line Press, $22.99, softcover, 76 pp.)
Nonfiction
The Complete Kennections: 5,000 Questions in 1,000 Puzzles
By Ken Jennings
The trick of Kennections, the weekly online trivia game by Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings and now collected into a 5,000-question printed volume, is guessing what the answers to five trivia questions have in common. For example, Question Number 1: Which is the oldest of the six weapons in the board game Clue, dating back to prehistoric times in essentially its current form? The answer: Rope. And the next four trivia answers in the group are also...titles of Alfred Hitchcock movies. Clever, clever, man. (Scribner, $20.99, softcover, 480 pp.)
Doing Small Things with Great Love: How Everyday Humanitarians Are Changing the World
By Sharon Eubank
In her first book, Doing Small Things with Great Love: How Everyday Humanitarians Are Changing the World, Sharon Eubank, the global humanitarian director for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, draws from notable thought leaders and her own experiences throughout the world to teach lessons to inspire service. The book is organized into short chapters, almost like a workbook for your conscience. (Shadow Mountain, $24.34, hardcover, 320 pp.)
Preserving Greatness: Great Salt Lake in Photographs
By Chris Carlson
An ode to a majestic, mysterious, and fragile landscape, Preserving Greatness: Great Salt Lake in Photographs is an elaborate love letter by Chris Carlson to his ancestral land. The coffee table book is brimming with aerial photographs of the lake, of course, but also intimate and revealing images strange and kaleidoscopic. The author details rich information about the wildlife, industry, ecology, diversity, art, and history of the largest saltwater lake of the Western Hemisphere. (Shadow Mountain, $49.99, hardcover, 256 pp.)
Confessions of a Reluctant Bachelor
By Matthew Maroon
Matthew Maroon's memoir, Confessions of a Reluctant Bachelor, reads like a novel, more specifically, a Brontë sisters' tale of manners, morals, and unspoken romantic tensions. Anyone who has lived through (survived?) the dynamics of an LDS Single Adult Ward will nod, cringe, and smile at the forthrightness of this revealingly honest volume, set in New York City, as Matt craves marriage while his own family's marriages are collapsing in scandal and distrust. The happy takeaway: "Everything is going to be fine." (Independently published, $12.99, softcover, 260 pp.)
Dispatches from Mormon Zion
By Ryan W. Davis, foreword by Terryl Givens
The literary category of the personal essay is rich, of course, and Ryan W. Davis' Dispatches from Mormon Zion is one of many LDS collections by BYU professors that aim to inspire, persuade, and educate. Davis' contribution to the genre is his gift of storytelling. Whether detailing thoughts about fishing, Taylor Swift, or Provo campus conversations, the author resists lecturing, instead crediting readers with the skills to make connections for themselves. (Eerdmans, $22.99, hardcover, 205 pp.)
Latter-day Sikh
James Goldberg and Nicole Wilkes Goldberg
The biography of Gurcharan Singh Gill, an early Sikh convert and the first LDS mission president in India, is told in a simple and loving way by James Goldberg and Nicole Wilkes Goldberg. The book, Latter-day Sikh: From a Guru's Feet to a Prophet's Call, recounts the conversion of a young Punjabi man in California, his move to BYU, marriage, large family, and numerous positions in Church leadership, over a span of several decades. Told with frankness about the trials the interracial couple faced in the U.S. and the tensions with his family back home, the story of Gill and his family is a testament to the global reach of the gospel. (Deseret Book, $23.99, hardcover, 224 pp.)
Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader
The Center for Latter-day Saint Arts
Winner of the 2024 AML Award for Criticism, Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader is the first expert critical treatment of Mormon visual art, featuring over 200 high-quality color illustrations. BYU Studies says of the book, "The triumph of this volume is threefold: It puts to rest our preoccupation with a singular definition of Mormon art, thus expanding the criteria for canonic inclusion; it provides alternative frameworks with which future scholars can proceed; and it urges readers to consider all that Latter-day Saint art already is and can be. The study of Latter-day Saint art will never be the same." (Oxford University Press, $49.99, hard cover, 664 pp.)
Games, Music, & More
Skyguard
BYU Center for Animation
BYU's Center for Animation is not content that its department wins award after award and provides a constant pipeline to the nation's biggest animation studios. It is also the #5 school in the world for video game design. Meet the class of 2025's Skyguard, a high energy steampunk horde defensive video game. In the game, robot marauders have been attacking airships en route to the city. You are the last point of defense. (BYU Center for Animation, download free on steampowered.com, for 1-4 players)
The Last Caravan is a tabletop roleplaying game created by Ted Bushman, set in a post-apocalyptic America that’s been devastated by an alien invasion. Unlike many roleplaying games where players take on the personas of superheroes or intergalactic warriors, this game is about regular people — teachers, truck drivers, librarians, mechanics, moms, even dogs — who band together to survive wild situations. This game was nominated for an ENNIE award (the fan-based Oscar of TTRPGs) for Best Game and Best Product of the Year, 2025. (Mythworks, $39.99, hardcover, 208 pp.)
The Last Caravan
By Ted Bushman
Mythological Fragments
By Steven Ricks
Two stunning works for voice, instruments, and electronics inspired by mythology form Steven Ricks' latest recording, Mythological Fragments. They are Medusa in Fragments (Jennifer Welch-Babidge, soprano and Keith Kirchoff, piano) and the chamber opera with a libretto by Stephen Tuttle, Baucis and Philemon (Madison Leonard, soprano and Shea Owens, baritone). The latter was commissioned by the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts and its premiere and video recording at BYU in October 2023 was supported by the College of Fine Arts and Communications and School of Music. (New Focus Recordings, $10, CD and digital, 66:09 minutes)
The Christmasing Spirit
We are excited to present the Center’s Advent Calendar of Literature!
Counting down the days in December until Christmas, get ready for prime examples of some of the best LDS writers from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Read classic short works by Nephi Anderson, Susa Young Gates, Josephine Spencer, and Maurine Whipple
Enjoy breakthrough short fiction by John Held, Jr., Susan Howe, and Donald Marshall
Find exciting works by James Goldberg, Theric Jepson, Allison Hong Merrill, William Morris, Gabriel González Nùñez, Steven L. Peck, and Isaac Richards
And discover ten previously unpublished works (including some written just for us) by Barrett Burgin, Liz Busby, Richard Lyman Bushman, Jeremy Grimshaw, George Handley, Luisa Perkins, Perry Raleigh, Todd Robert Petersen/Zoë Petersen, Daniel Yen Tu, and Darlene Young
Some Christmas stories, a little speculative fiction, a couple of brilliant essays, powerful, humorous, and heartbreaking stories: the equivalent of a boxed sampler of literary deliciousness. We can’t wait for you to savor these stories all month long! (Free, sign up for alerts when the first stories release).
Children’s Books
You're Beautiful
A follow up to their 2021 children's book, A Child of God, Chantél and Mauli Bonner's latest rhyming, read-aloud title is You're Beautiful.
A little girl named Mya at the playground says, "Some kids say mean things when I play at the park. They talk about my color and ask me why I'm dark." Mya's father comforts her with a song about her "beautiful brown skin." Illustrated by Gigi Moore to include and embrace all ethnicities, the book concludes with this: "The most beautiful part about all our skin is what lies underneath—it's what comes from within." (Shadow Mountain, $19.99, hardcover, 32 pp.)
The Playmakers
By Chad Morris & Shelly Morris
Middle-schoolers with something to prove join forces in the most unlikely fashion to worm their way onto the school's basketball team and drama production. Novelists Chad Morris and Shelly Brown fill The Playmakers with a spectrum of young outsiders, their parents, and teachers for a humorous and uplifting story about determination and cooperation. (Shadow Mountain, $18.99, hardcover, 256 pp.)
Wendy's Ever After
Ten years after leaving Neverland, Wendy returns to the land of Peter Pan in Julie Wright's teen/young adult novel, Wendy's Ever After, only to find herself pulled between two romantic figures, Peter himself and a dashing young man, who happens to be Captian Hook's nephew. (Shadow Mountain, $19.99, hardcover, 272 pp.)
By Micah Player
This Is a Moment
A subtle and profound picture book, This Is a Moment, written and illustrated by Micah Player, asks the reader and listener to consider deeply the marvelous present in time. It begins, "This is a moment. A moment is made when everything that came before meets what is happening now." It highlights the variety of an individual's happenings—emotions, experiences, and feelings—with a rainbow of beautiful illustrations. (Rocky Pond Books, $18.99, hardcover, 40 pp.)
Original Art
Divine Creativity, Cultural Relevance
By Justin Wheatley
Artist Justin Wheatley created this large-scale mixed media work as a living embodiment of the Center’s mission: to exist at the intersection of divine creativity and cultural relevance.
Constructed in real time through layers of paint, collage, and architectural imagery, the piece captures the spirit of ongoing dialogue between faith and culture.
Justin Wheatley (American, b. 1980)
Untitled (2025)
Mixed Media, 24 x 24 inches
$2,000 plus FedEx ground shipping
‘93 Castrol (limited collector’s edition)
By Daniel Yen Tu
A cinematic object in its own right, ’93 Castrol is a multi-sensory experience that fuses storytelling, photography, and design into a singular collector’s edition.
’93 Castrol is the debut feature-length screenplay by filmmaker Daniel Yen Tu. Set in mid-1990s Taiwan, the story follows three siblings on a high-stakes road trip: Da Ge, a small-time thief; Didi, an army deserter; and Xiaomei, a gifted aspiring fashion designer. When the brothers steal and attempt to sell a rare racecar to fund their sister’s education, the trio embarks on a journey from a southern fishing village to Taipei—pursued by gang rivals and haunted by a mysterious family curse.
The Limited-edition Artist’s Book includes the full 87-page screenplay and 66 striking black and white photographs captured by the artist during a 2025 trip to Taiwan. Shot on both 35mm and 120 film using vintage cameras and a mix of Ilford, Lucky Films, and Eastman stocks, the images were developed in Rodinal and reflect the atmospheric textures of Taiwan’s landscape and urban life.
Housed in a custom black epoxy-coated MDF slipcase, the hardcover volume is topped with a miniature diorama of a Taiwanese highway, complete with stenciled asphalt and a 1:32 scale Revell Audi Sport quattro rally car—the same model that stars in the screenplay. Each slipcase is finished with a unique, artist-shot Instax Square photograph affixed to its underside.
Daniel Yen Tu (Taiwanese-Australian, born 1993)
’93 Castrol (2025)
Hardcover, 238 pp., 11 x 8.5 x .75 inches
Slipcase, medium density board coated in black epoxy, acrylic-painted diorama on cork, limited edition Revell Audi Sport quattro SMB RAC Rally 1984 model car, and unique photo on Instax Square, 12 x 9 x 1.75 inches
Edition of 7 copies for sale, plus one artist’s copy.
$380 plus FedEx Ground shipping.
The Investigator/The Observer (limited collector’s edition)
By Todd Robert Petersen & Zoë Petersen
For this expanded, limited edition, author Todd Petersen created The Observer—a parallel narrative with The Investigator—told through a journal and sketchbook brought to life by his daughter, illustrator Zoë Petersen. It follows a young woman traveling east in search of her parents, documenting her journey for the unborn child she carries.
These richly layered stories come together in a meticulously crafted object. The Investigator appears as handwritten pages on scraps of found paper—each one a trompe-l’œil artwork—that the reader reads in sequence, as if piecing together the character’s story long afterwards. The Observer continues the tactile contact through a faux journal and coptic-bound sketchbook. Additional items, including a Christmas card and Risograph pamphlets, complete the immersive experience.
Housed in a custom, handmade wooden case inspired by vintage military medical boxes, The Investigator/The Observer is both a compelling story and a collectible artifact.
Todd Robert Petersen (American, born 1969) and Zoë Petersen (American, born 2002)
The Investigator/The Observer (2025)
Edition of 11 copies for sale, plus two artists' copies: $700 plus FedEx Ground shipping.