Saturday, October 17, 2026
Signature Books
508 W 400 N, Salt Lake City
Celebrating the Life of Carol Lynn Pearson
An evening to honor her words, her wisdom, and her remarkable life.
Open House from 6:00 PM–9:00 PM
Facing East
Carol Lynn Pearson
Facing East deals with a Mormon couple confronting the suicide of their gay son. The problems inherent in dealing with this emotional and ideological divide are universal to all humans, let alone any particular religious group. The three characters—father (Alex), mother (Ruth), and gay partner of the deceased (Marcus)—meet for the first time at Andrew’s grave following the funeral. The audience “becomes” the congregation in a new funeral the father is giving for his son, this time a funeral that speaks the truth. There are “memory moments” in which each parent relives important times in the past, during which the other parent speaks the son’s lines from the darkness. The only time we “see” the deceased son is toward the end when his partner “becomes” him in memory. These stylistic devices make us yearn to actually see and hear Andrew, but we cannot. Neither did most of us truly see or hear him when he was alive.
This book contains the script for Facing East.
paperback $11.95
Kingdoms of the Night Sky
G. Thomas Burgess
It is 2026, and millions of Americans are getting ready to form separate communities so they may live by the principles taught in The Book of Shem. Calling themselves “Fellows,” they revere Isaac Snow, the deceased author of The Book of Shem, as their prophet. To settle the question of whether he’s a prophet, a fraud, or something else, Snow’s son sets out to tell his father’s story. Inspired by the 1960s folk music revival and his experiences with the beatniks, hippies, and Mormons, Isaac has crafted a unique message that millions of Americans find irresistible, but only after his many years of feeling cursed and forsaken. Set in New York City, San Francisco, and Provo, Utah, the story blends tragedy, humor, and redemption. Kingdoms of the Night Sky is a rollicking journey of discovery that reminds us of the fractured nature of reality itself.
paperback $24.95 | ebook $19.99
Some Hard Stars
poems by David Thacker
Some Hard Stars knits together past and present in pursuit of a deeper understanding of love, rebirth, and sustaining joy. Through poems full of care and tenderness for family, neighbors, and friends, Thacker demonstrates how “love requires / a willing mind,” especially when confronting the difficulties of mortality with honesty. These poems sing and think out loud, through traditional forms and meters as well as through music invented for the needs at hand. They are intense and exacting in their questions, careful and complex in their laments, and delicate with sacred moments of change.
paperback $16.95 | ebook $15.99
These Saints Are Stones
poems by Millie Tullis
In Millie Tullis’s new poetry collection, These Saints Are Stones, a faithless daughter is haunted by her third-great-grandmother, Martha, a woman who married her stepfather at sixteen and became a sister-wife to her own mother. Tullis cannot stop uncovering details about Martha, who left no written history behind, and her silence permeates this collection, which is rife with gaps and fragments, scraps of memory that blend with dreams. Sparse and spare, these poems echo the red desert landscape where the speaker’s ancestors lived and died, where she hunts for graves among the rocks and confronts a past she can never fully know. After all, like a sampling of lace, the cloth of women’s history is more hole than thread.
paperback $16.95 | ebook $15.99
The Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson—Mormon Author,
Feminist, and Activist, Volume 1: 1956–1990
Carol Lynn Pearson
“I feel somehow that of all the writing I am doing, my diary is the most important.” So wrote the beloved and bestselling author, poet, and playwright Carol Lynn Pearson in her 1979 diary. Several years before, she recorded, “I feel the imperative of history. . . . Add that to my being a household word to many and I cannot escape the feeling that in many years there might be a number of people interested in these pages.” Today, that time has come.
Unbeknownst to almost everyone but herself, Pearson kept a near-daily diary since she was a teenager, recording her remarkable story in the context of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Mormon America. In this first of a four-volume series, Pearson chronicles her love for her church but also her troubling experiences and concerns with its patriarchy, historic doctrine of polygamy, omission of a feminine divine, and homophobia. Readers will rejoice with her as her first book of poetry, Beginnings, sells an astonishing 150,000+ copies and puts her on the map in the 1960s, empathize with her as she watches her church help kill the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, and mourn with her as her mixed-orientation marriage ends and she cares for her former husband in her home as he dies of AIDS in the 1980s. The sensitive-girl-turned-strong-woman who emerges in these diaries insists that we move from patriarchy into partnership, change our destructive policies towards Queer people, and invite God the Mother back into our heavenly family.
paperback $29.95 | ebook $22.99
Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, 1952–1971
Edited by Gary James Bergera
During the twenty years he served as president of LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University (1951–71), Ernest L. Wilkinson transformed the school into a showplace of the church’s educational values. "More than any other single cause," his successor, Dallin H. Oaks, observed, “[Wilkinson's] remarkable and relentless leadership . . . is the key to the present stature of Brigham Young University.” Under Wilkinson, the student body grew more than four-fold to 25,000, the faculty tripled, colleges and departments more than doubled, library holdings increased nearly 500 percent, the number of buildings jumped twenty-fold, and as perhaps the most telling manifestation of Wilkinson's influence, annual LDS Church subsidies rose fifteen-fold to $22 million. His single-minded drive to mold BYU into the kind of institution he hoped would command the admiration of American academia permanently set the direction for Latter-day Saint higher education. As he presided over this academic landscape, Wilkinson produced about 5,000 pages of typed, single-spaced diaries–—a literary creation that ranks among the most important diaries in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Wilkinson also had access to the highest echelon of the church, writing of numerous meetings of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Educating Zion assembles in one volume an annotated abridgement of those diary entries having the greatest interest to modern readers. The diaries are both a remarkable achievement and a phenomenal historical record whose importance cannot be overstated.
paperback $39.95 | ebook $22.99
Game Changers: AJ Dybantsa, BYU,
and the Struggle for the Soul of Basketball
Matthew Bowman and Wayne LeCheminant
Thurl Bailey, audiobook narrator
In one of the most unlikely coups in college basketball history, a religious school in Utah signed basketball phenomenon AJ Dybantsa. He will play for Brigham Young University—hardly the sort of basketball powerhouse that typically attracts exceptional and non-Mormon players like him.
Game Changers explores how BYU managed this stunning feat. A year before signing Dybantsa, the university lured coaching star Kevin Young from the NBA to run its basketball program. In the decade before, court rulings and institutional reform put money at the forefront of college sports in ways the American public had never seen. And for generations before that, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built a theological structure and institutional commitment to basketball that put the sport front and center at BYU.
Game Changers places Dybantsa in the context of this history and culture and explores the tensions in the sport. For Latter-day Saints and many other basketball fans, the sport is about personal discipline, character, and a commitment to success. But more and more, universities, the NCAA, and the professional leagues place money above everything else. These dual impulses have pulled the sport in general, and the church-owned BYU in particular, in opposite directions. The book reveals why Dybantsa decided to attend BYU and what he means to the sports world—in Provo, in the United States, and around the globe—as his career unfolds.
hardback $39.95 | paperback $29.95 | ebook $22.99 | audiobook $19.95
Tracy Y. Cannon: Tabernacle Organist
and Pioneering Musician, 1879–1961
Shelby Fisher
Tracy Y. Cannon guided the musical voice of Mormonism from its provincial roots at the turn of the twentieth century into a state of maturity by the end of his career in 1960. Cannon served as Salt Lake Tabernacle organist from 1905 until 1930, accompanying some of the first radio broadcasts of Music and the Spoken Word. Under his leadership, the McCune School of Music and Art became a cultural hub, offering accredited music degrees as well as community enrichment activities, influencing Utah’s next generation of music educators, composers, leaders, and policymakers. But perhaps his most lasting legacy was his work with the General Music Committee of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, through which he oversaw the creation of two hymnals, many anthem books, organ anthologies, method books, and an expansive organist and chorister education program.
Cannon’s musical tastes—dignified, refined, reverent, and heavily influenced by Northern European tradition—became the norm for Latter-day Saint congregations for generations. Through his multifaceted career, this brief biography explores the evolution of Latter-day Saint hymnody, “art music,” cultural taste, and music education during the first half of the twentieth century.
paperback $16.95 | ebook $15.99
We’re Thankful for the Moisture: A Gay Guy’s Guide to Mormon Faith, Family, and Fruit Preservation
Eli McCann
We’re Thankful for the Moisture contains personal essays by award-winning humor columnist Eli McCann for The Salt Lake Tribune, along with corresponding cartoons by the Tribune’s Pat Bagley. McCann explores cultural Mormonism and his experiences growing up in Utah as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1990s, coming out as gay in adulthood, leaving his faith, and navigating life in Salt Lake City with his husband and their young child. Known for his observational humor, nostalgia, and compassion for those in his community who span the religious spectrum, McCann weaves together the silliness that often comes out of communal traditions with the humanity of those who hold those traditions dear. “I still think there’s no better sound than the background noise of neighbors being neighbors,” he writes, ”the simple hum of a people gathered.” While there is much humor to be found in baffling cultural entreaties, like McCann’s grandmother sincerely claiming that nineteenth-century Mormon pioneers wouldn’t trade places with those who live in 2025, or parents justifying a curfew time by insisting “the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight,” there is also beauty in what prompts a person to believe such things. McCann’s writings seek to prove just that.
Published in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune.
paperback $19.95 | ebook $17.99 | audiobook $14.95
Creature: The Life and Loves of May Swenson
Stephen Carter
In the summer of 1936, twenty-three-year-old May Swenson boarded a bus heading east out of her Mormon hometown of Logan, Utah. Her destination was New York City, where she had a single goal: become a poet. Creature tells the story of how this small-town woman fought to achieve her dreams in the Depression-era big city, keeping a roof over her head and honing her craft as she pursued romantic relationships with both men and women. After decades of struggle, Swenson became one of mid-century America’s most beloved and prolific poets.
What is it that makes her poetry so extraordinary? How did she see and reveal the world? How did she teach the art of poetry? And how does her work interact with her Mormon roots? Readers will learn the answers to these questions and more in this artfully written biography.
FALL 2026
paperback $21.95 | ebook $19.99 | audiobook $19.95
The King’s English
Weller Book Works
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Audible
The Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson—Mormon Author, Feminist, and Activist, Volume 3: 2003–2014
Carol Lynn Pearson
Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot initiative that overturned the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage, looms large in volume 3 of Carol Lynn Pearson’s diaries. The intense lobbying in favor of the measure by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints caused widespread protests against the church and rifts within congregations, families, and friendships that felt like they might never heal. Pearson documented it all.
When she learned through friends close to church leaders that members of the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles were shocked by the backlash, she wondered, “How do 15 prophets, seers, and revelators not see this coming when the rest of us did?”
A lifelong feminist, Pearson’s diaries also reveal her concerns for gender equality. She chronicles her observations of Ordain Women, a movement by a group of Latter-day Saint feminists who lobbied to change the church’s all-male priesthood. At the end of this volume, Pearson takes on yet another issue: the ongoing Mormon doctrine that polygamy is practiced in the eternities. Pearson heard from thousands of women who feared that they would be forced to share their husbands in the afterlife. The pain of these women propelled her forward into her next book project, challenging the doctrine of “eternal polygamy.”
Even as she faced her own struggles, Pearson buoyed up those around her. She took phone calls, answered letters, and comforted visitors who were hurting because of the church’s policies. She was, for many, a symbol of hope.
FALL 2026
paperback $29.95 | ebook $22.99
The Last Pioneer: John Taylor, a Mormon Prophet
(50th Anniversary Edition)
Samuel W. Taylor
Foreword by John G. Turner
Mormon prophet John Taylor’s life is usually recounted as a series of anecdotes: singing hymns in Carthage Jail before a mob assassinated Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Taylor’s life spared when, according to myth, his pocketwatch stopped a bullet; his practice of polygamy, including taking a wife fifty years his junior while on the run as a fugitive from federal marshals; and his 1886 revelation that said God would not “revoke” the law of plural marriage, “for it is everlasting,” a revelation whose authenticity was questioned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for over a century but became the foundational text for breakaway sects continuing the practice of polygamy. But there was more to Taylor than his role in the martyrdom, his plural wives, his clashes with the federal government, and the legacy of fundamentalist Mormonism.
Taylor spent his first two decades in his home country of England before immigrating to Canada. His first wife, Leonora, was initially more interested when missionaries knocked on their door. But once he committed to the church, John Taylor was unflappable in his faith and zealous in his dedication. The Taylors moved from Toronto to Ohio, then to Missouri, and finally to Illinois as they followed their faith and their prophet Joseph Smith. John became an apostle in 1838 and a publisher thereafter, printing church newspapers. He followed Brigham Young to the Salt Lake Valley, where he became a prominent church and political leader for decades before finally ascending to the head of the faith in 1880.
In this timeless biography, Samuel W. Taylor weaves the threads of his grandfather’s life into a rich tapestry. Drawing on letters, speeches, diaries, and reminiscences, a well-rounded and riveting portrait of the third Mormon prophet comes into focus. A professional writer by trade, Samuel Taylor was uniquely suited to tell this story—and what a story it is.
FALL 2026
paperback: $29.95
The New Testament for Latter-day Saints
Alex Douglas
In The New Testament for Latter-day Saints, Alex Douglas introduces Latter-day Saint readers to the basics of modern New Testament scholarship. Douglas answers the question, “What did the authors of the Bible believe about Jesus?” elucidating the striking diversity in how Jesus is portrayed in the New Testament. It ranges from authors who saw Jesus as teacher and prophet, to those who worshipped him as God incarnate. Douglas shows how the Bible we have today is a product of these competing voices, each shaped by conflicts within early Christianity. The book also examines how key Christian ideas—such as sin, salvation, priesthood authority, and the role of women—developed as part of this conflict. Drawing on modern biblical scholarship, it places these portrayals alongside Latter-day Saint beliefs, helping readers see points of alignment and tension.
Ultimately, the book invites readers to wrestle with what it means to see revelation as a process rather than a one-time event. Readers will walk away seeing the New Testament in an entirely different light, as a record of that process.
FALL 2026
paperback $24.95 | ebook $19.99
The Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson—Mormon Author,
Feminist, and Activist, Volume 2: 1990–2002
Carol Lynn Pearson
Of these years of her life, poet, writer, and feminist Carol Lynn Pearson says, “The plot thickens, as all good plots do. My life and your life—if we are brave enough—move into areas that we had not anticipated. We feel sometimes that we want to run back to safer ground, but life has decided otherwise and so we take those next steps. Volume two of my diaries gives us a closeup of the years 1990 to 2002, bringing us an abundance of both joy and distress.”
Throughout the 1990s, Pearson records and laments her church’s efforts to punish scholars and activists while celebrating the success of her books and one-woman play, Mother Wove the Morning. Along the way, she comforts the suffering, endures terrible personal loss, and witnesses the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11. “Bless everyone who fights for what is right,” she writes. Few have fought harder than Carol Lynn Pearson.
paperback $29.95 | ebook $22.99
Benchmark Books
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