The 2026
CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE
Original Prints | Advent Calendar | Fiction & Poetry | Nonfiction | Scholarly | Children's Books
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2026 Christmas Print by Walter Rane
Rockefeller Christmas Tree—A limited-edition print of 50 by the beloved artist
“Quote from Walter Rane.”
Walter Rane has lived in New York for nearly 30 years, across several periods of his artistic life, and every year he visits Rockefeller Center as part of his December celebrations. This etching comes out of his holiday family tradition. Rane sets the enormous tree against the tall Art Deco facade of 30 Rock and hatches it almost to black. Below it, a handful of skaters circle the rink beneath Prometheus.
Rane etched the copper plate, printed each impression himself, and presented the edition to the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. Every purchase supports our work with Latter-day Saint artists.
Give it to someone who has ever stood at a rail and watched skaters and marveled at a decorated outdoor tree, or just treasure it yourself.
Walter Rane (American, born 1949)
Rockefeller Christmas Tree (2026)
Etching, paper size 8 x 6 inches, image size 3.5 x 2.125 inches
Edition of 50, signed and numbered
$100 + shipping, unframed
More Original Prints Commissioned by the Center
2025 Limited-Edition Holiday Print by Tyler Gathro
Award-winning artist Tyler Gathro has created a quietly stunning landscape for this year’s commissioned holiday print—designed exclusively to support the work of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. The arched silhouette evokes a devotional window, inviting viewers to contemplate light, shadow, and the presence of the divine.
Embedded in the piece is a message punched in Braille from the artist’s own writings—an intimate reflection on faith as something felt before it is seen:
“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.”
Artwork details
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
Commissioned by the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, 2025
Firmament Below is a cut-paper, limited edition print that juxtaposes 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).
Wehle’s body of work concerns itself with the struggle between the spiritual and the temporal. Her art focuses upon the cycles of life, the seasons, and the relationships between growth and decay. In Firmament Below, she celebrates the birth of Christ and the elements of life.
The top sheet is handmade, heavyweight mulberry paper, and the sheet underneath is Unryu, a lightweight, translucent, long-fibered, green paper from Thailand made from the bark of the mulberry tree.
This work was commissioned by the Center as its 2024 annual Christmas print.
Elise Wehle (American, born 1986)
Firmament Below (2024)
Cut paper, 12.25 x 10.25 inches, signed and numbered, edition: 50
$100, plus $10 ground shipping. Uframed.
The wild, true story of She made the holidays delicious (2023):
In January 2021, a 48-year old man was arrested by the Boston police department. He had broken into Arden Gallery, destroyed and stole artworks, and tried to break into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with a small sledge hammer. Leslie Graff’s work was in that Arden Gallery show. Her painting, titled She made it delicious, was slashed by the thief and was unrepairable.
Now, to bring a destroyed work back to life, Graff has returned to the image for a new work. To accomplish it, she created a full-scale cake image paired, this time, 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. Graff then created the smaller holiday scene for this project which she titled She made the holidays delicious.
This work was commissioned by the Center as its annual 2023 Christmas print.
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), signed and numbered, edition: 50
Unframed. Quantities are limited.
An instant heirloom, this image is of Kershisnik's glorious angel with a common man's reaction. This print was the inaugural holiday benefit print to support the Center.
Brian Kershisnik (American, born 1962)
Gloria (2022)
Relief print 3.75 x 4.75 (image size), 9.1875 x 9.75 (sheet size), signed and number, edition: 50
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Something to Look Forward To
The Center's Advent Calendar of LDS Literature
This December, the Advent Calendar travels further than ever.
Open a door and you might land in Zarahemla on the night Samuel’s prophecy comes due, in a Wasatch mining camp buried by avalanche on Christmas Eve, or in a Swedish fishing village where a sick girl’s only wish is to see the king.
One morning brings a frontier mother in 1870s southern Utah staring at an empty stocking; the next, a book thief prowling a pharmacy at 1:42 a.m.
Stories first printed in the Woman’s Exponent, Juvenile Instructor, and Improvement Era sit beside contemporary work never published anywhere, alongside a tale from Argentina that links Santa’s workshop to the World Cup, a German novel shadowed by the 1930s, an autobiographical story of childhood in Togo, and a graphic novel in which Jared and his brother hunt saber-toothed tigers and stumble onto fire.
Some will make you laugh out loud. Some, like a nine-year-old’s June night when only the moon stays the same, will break your heart.
Prophets and giants, new souls and stubborn grandmothers, a sun that rises in the west: a new door opens every day until Christmas. Come see what’s behind it (Free, sign up for alerts when the first stories release).
FICTION & POETRY
A Bad Deal in Mormon Land
T.I.M. Wirkus
It's 1908, and spirit medium Madame Ilsa von Hoffmann is out of options. Rather than join a doomed commune of fellow trans ex-vaudevillians, she takes a lucrative job in Salt Lake City from a religious extremist who wants her to summon the ghost of Joseph Smith to bless his fledgling offshoot church. Add an East Coast journalist with a hidden agenda, a volatile henchman, a relentlessly orthodox apostle, a rogue third wife, a vengeful private investigator, and an accumulating pile of bodies, and Ilsa's priority shifts from saving her career to getting out of Utah alive. A wry, twisty historical mystery. (Type Eighteen Books, $9.99, Kindle, 329 pp.
Ender’s Tribe
Orson Scott Card
It began with a short story. Ender's Tribe collects the original "Ender's Game" along with seven more tales from across the Ender Universe, featuring Mazer Rackham, Peter Wiggin, Han Tzu, and of course Ender himself. Bookending a saga that became a global phenomenon, it's essential for longtime fans and an ideal entry point for new ones. (Blackstone Publishing, $29.99, hardcover, 304 pp.)
A Bad Deal in Mormon Land
Brandon Sanderson
Born in the last cold hour of the last cold day of the last cold month, an orphan named December grows up in a land sustained by rivers of colorful demon blood. When she learns a plague is coming that will curdle the rivers and ravage the kingdom, she sails upriver to warn a royal court that has no reason to believe her, with a chatty priestess, a fledgling fashion designer, and a roguish count along the way. A standalone Cosmere novel from Brandon Sanderson, with illustrations by Tran Nguyen. (Dragonsteel, $10, ebook)
Loved Ones
Kevin Klein
Chapel cleaning, youth soccer, midwinter pruning, the middle-school band concert: Kevin Klein finds the sacred in exactly the places most of us spend our weeks. Arranged around the virtues of faith, hope, charity, and love, these forty poems are reverent and playful by turns, rooted in scripture and alive with disarming warmth. A gentle reminder that the divine is found not only in miracles but in the people who teach us to believe and endure. (Greg Kofford Books, $9.95, softcover, 94 pp.)
Necronauts
Ryan Habermeyer
Welcome to Calypsee, Utah, a fundamentalist town whose patron saint is Ronald Reagan and whose motto is "In Armageddon We Trust." Among its misfits and prophets lives a boy in a cosmonaut helmet (or possibly an old fishbowl) who longs to launch himself into space. Told through ninety-five newspaper obituaries and interspersed with vernacular photographs, Ryan Habermeyer's novel is a loosely reimagined Pinocchio, an ode to campy sci-fi, and a sharp satire of 1980s Americana, by turns whimsical and savage. For the reader who likes their fiction strange. (Still House Press, $20, softcover, 322 pp.)
Neither Fear Ye Their Fear
Stephen Dethloff
Readers of Isaiah know the line "Neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid." Stephen Dethloff's historical novel takes us to Jerusalem in 734 BC, when that counsel was first given, and to young Prince Ahaz, caught between joining a regional alliance and bowing to the rising power of Assyria. Palace intrigue, ancient ritual, and the brutal realities of Iron Age warfare come to gritty life, and the maps, chapter notes, and bibliography make it a rewarding companion to Old Testament study. A tragedy about a man who tries to save his kingdom and risks his soul. (Good Shapes Press, $18.99, softcover, 314 pp.)
Sacred Scar
Scott Hales
Scott Hales, beloved for his Garden of Enid comics and his work as a Church historian, turns to poetry with a storyteller's eye and a historian's care. These poems move from ancient deserts to modern suburbs, from battlefield soil to baptismal fonts, drawing on saints, pioneers, ancestors, and his own family to show how holiness can emerge from grief, doubt, curiosity, and humor. A meditation on belief: how it breaks, heals, and returns. (Greg Kofford Books, $9.95, softcover, 94 pp.)
Some Hard Stars
David Thacker
David Thacker's poems sing and think out loud, sometimes in traditional forms and meters, sometimes in music invented for the moment. Some Hard Stars knits past and present together in search of love, rebirth, and sustaining joy, with deep tenderness for family, neighbors, and friends. Thacker is exacting in his questions and careful in his laments, reminding us that "love requires / a willing mind." (Signature Books, $16.95, softcover, 103 pp.)
The Sun Has Shifted As Have I
Jonathan T. Bailey
Jonathan T. Bailey is a photographer and writer of the American West, and his poems carry the desert in them: the buzz of cicadas, the song of the hermit thrush, a landscape that holds desolation and renewal at once. This collection maps a personal transformation through longing, belonging, and self-discovery, refusing to separate pain from beauty or vulnerability from strength. These are poems that prefer honesty to closure. (Torrey House Press, $16.95, softcover, 74 pp.)
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
The Curse of the Lost Cave
Stephanie Bearce
It's Outlaw Days in Sassafras Springs, and the whole town has treasure fever. When a mysterious book turns up at an archaeological dig, Raven Gallows and her fellow Truth Trackers set out after the legendary hidden loot of outlaw Alf Bolin, only to find a shadowy corporation, rival hunters, and maybe Raven's own mother on the same trail. Riddles, betrayal, and a final test of courage in a lost cave make for a page-turning middle-grade mystery with real questions about honesty and preserving history. (Shadow Mountain, $19.99, hardcover, 224 pp.)
Enough Elizabeths
Heather Harris Bergevin, Lexi Hall
Elizabeth is a princess in a tower, which is a great honor in her kingdom, except for one embarrassing secret: she's afraid of heights. When a moody dragon moves into her suspiciously tidy bedroom, monarchs, palace officials, a determined prime minister, and a reluctant knight all tumble over one another trying to negotiate. Is it a princess-napping if the dragon only wanted a nap? A giggle-worthy picture book that rewards reading aloud. (Lucky Rabbit Publishing, $19.99, hardcover, 32 pp.)
Expressions of Jesus, Children’s Edition: Cultural Representations of the Savior of the World
Rose Datoc Dall
In this children's edition of Expressions of Jesus, twenty-two artists from ten countries paint the Savior as he might look in their own communities: Indian, Cambodian, Mexican, Ethiopian, Navajo, Chinese. Paired with scriptures, the paintings tell the story of Christ's life from his baptism to his resurrection and promised return. The message for young readers is simple and lovely: no matter what Jesus looks like, he loves everyone, everywhere. (Shadow Mountain, $19.99, hardcover, 48 pp.)
Fablehaven: The Illustrated Edition, Vol. 1
Brandon Mull, Brandon Dorman
Twenty years after Kendra and Seth first discovered their grandfather's secret preserve for magical creatures, Fablehaven returns in an oversized anniversary edition with one hundred new color illustrations by Brandon Dorman. Watch the yard bloom from monochrome to a full-color garden of fairies, see Hugo the golem hurl pumpkins across the page, and linger over a battle painting worth framing. Perfect for introducing the series to a new reader, or for the longtime fan who has already worn out a paperback copy. (Shadow Mountain, $39.99, hardcover, 272 pp.)
Holidays at the Castle (Tuesdays at the Castle)
Jessica Day George
Fans of the Tuesdays at the Castle series know that Castle Glower has a mind of its own, and the holidays are no exception. Celie is finally home for winter, ready for feasts, decorations, and magical displays with her family and the visiting royals of Grath. Then the griffins start misbehaving, a blizzard rolls in, and celebration looks less and less likely. A cozy, funny seasonal adventure from a New York Times bestselling author, with holiday crafts and a recipe tucked in the back. (Bloomsbury Children's Books, $10.99, softcover, 144 pp.)
Ireantum 23.4 Back to School 2026
Various children
For its Back to School 2026 issue, Irreantum handed the pages over to the next generation. KIDS is the journal's first issue by, for, and about children: eleven works of writing, poetry, and drawings, mostly by teenagers, with a few younger contributors. Consider it an early look at Latter-day Saint voices we hope to hear from for decades to come, and a lovely thing to share with the young writer in your family. (Irreantum, free, digital)
Nando
McCall Hoyle
Nando began life as the runt of the litter and grew into a border collie who believes he must be perfect to keep his place on the farm. Then a tropical storm turns the creek into a raging river, scattering the farm's children and animals, and Nando is swept far from home. Rescued by Levi, a boy also displaced by the storm, he learns on their long journey back that he doesn't have to be perfect to be loved. For readers who cherished Because of Winn-Dixie and Homeward Bound. (Shadow Mountain, $18.99, hardcover, 176 pp.)
Wish on a Willow
Maria Oka
Eleven-year-old Eloise is spending the summer at her grandfather's farm while her dad recovers from a terrible bike accident. In the attic she finds her father's childhood journal, which claims that Mama Willow, the enormous weeping willow on the property, holds real magic. Eloise isn't sure she believes it until she sees it for herself, just as a slick developer announces plans to cut the tree down. A tender middle-grade story about fear, hope, and the wishes too big to let go. (Shadow Mountain, $19.99, hardcover, 256 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)