The Peacegiver: How Christ Offers to Heal Our Hearts and Homes


James L. Ferrell - 2004
    Unlike other books about the atonement, The Peacegiver is written as an extended parable. It tells the story of a man struggling, with the help of a loved one, to come unto Christ. IN reading the rich details of his often difficult journey, we find ourselves embarked on a personal journey of our own. His questions are our questions; his problems, our problems; his discoveries, our discoveries. Along the way, the truths of the gospel are unfolded with surprising clarity and power, illuminating aspects of the atonement that few of us have ever heard or considered before. These surprising implications show us the way to deep and lasting peace in our hearts and homes."My peace I give unto you," the Savior declared. The Peacegiver explores in a deeply personal way what we must do to receive the peace he stands willing to give.

Emma and Joseph: Their Divine Mission


Gracia N. Jones - 1999
    The author, Gracia N. Jones, a great-great-grandaughter of Emma and Joseph, offers a new understanding of their shared lives, presenting in the process information about them that has not been readily available in the past.

In This House of Brede


Rumer Godden - 1969
    This extraordinarily sensitive and insightful portrait of religious life centers on Philippa Talbot, a highly successful professional woman who leaves her life among the London elite to join a cloistered Benedictine community.

Isle of Canes


Elizabeth Shown Mills - 2004
    Historically accurate and genealogically significant, this first novel by eminent genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills is a gripping tale of racial bias, human conflict, and economic ruin told against the backdrop of colonial Louisiana. This novel is the result of more than thirty years of research. To fuel the story, as well as to maintain historical accuracy, the author found and referenced actual family history documents such as baptism records, manumission papers, probate records, land records, book extracts, and more to reconstruct the lives and times of Francois, Fanny, Coincoin, Augustin, and countless other unforgettable characters. But it takes more than documents on paper and microfilm to bring such an epic story to life. Mills' engaging prose puts flesh on the bones and pulls you into the lives and lifestyle of long-ago Louisiana.""

Sally Hemings


Barbara Chase-Riboud - 1977
    Visited by a census-taker in 1831, 60-year-old Sally is encouraged to recount her past.

Cloudsplitter


Russell Banks - 1998
    Deeply researched, brilliantly plotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart. But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the reader feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.

Heaven Is Here: An Incredible Story of Hope, Triumph, and Everyday Joy


Stephanie Nielson - 2012
    She quickly attracted a loyal following that was captivated by the upbeat mother happily raising her young children, madly in love with her husband, Christian (Mr. Nielson to her readers), and filled with gratitude for her blessed life.However, everything changed in an instant on a sunny day in August 2008, when Stephanie and Christian were in a horrific plane crash. Christian was burned over 40 percent of his body, and Stephanie was on the brink of death, with burns over 80 percent of her body. She would remain in a coma for four months.In the aftermath of this harrowing tragedy, Stephanie maintained a stunning sense of humor, optimism, and resilience. She has since shared this strength of spirit with others through her blog, in magazine features, and on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Now, in this moving memoir, Stephanie tells the full, extraordinary story of her unlikely recovery and the incredible love behind it—from a riveting account of the crash to all that followed in its wake. With vivid detail, Stephanie recounts her emotional and physical journey, from her first painful days after awakening from the coma to the first time she saw her face in the mirror, the first kiss she shared with Christian after the accident, and the first time she talked to her children after their long separation. She also reflects back on life before the accident, to her happy childhood as one of nine siblings, her close-knit community and strong Mormon faith, and her fairy-tale love story, all of which became her foundation of strength as she rebuilt her life.What emerges from the wreckage of a tragic accident is a unique perspective on joy, beauty, and overcoming adversity that is as gripping as it is inspirational. Heaven Is Here is a poignant reminder of how faith and family, love and community can bolster us, sustain us, and quite literally, in some cases, save us.

Monticello: A Daughter and Her Father


Sally Cabot Gunning - 2016
    Five years later, father and daughter have come home to Monticello, the family’s beloved plantation set high in the lush hills of the Virginia countryside. Though Monticello has suffered from her father’s absence, Martha finds it essentially unchanged, even as she has been transformed. The sheltered girl that sailed to Europe is now a handsome seventeen-year-old woman with a battle-scarred heart, who sees a world far more complicated than it once seemed. Blessed with her father’s sharp mind and independent spirit, Martha has long abhorred slavery and yearned for its swift end. Yet she now discovers that the home she adores is burdened by growing debt and cannot survive long without the labor of its slaves. Her bonds with those around her are shifting, too. As the doting father she has idolized since childhood returns to government, he becomes increasingly distracted by tumultuous fights for power and troubling attachments that pull him further away. And as Martha begins to pay closer attention to Sally Hemings—the beautiful light-skinned slave long acknowledged to be her mother’s half-sister—she realizes that the slave’s position in the household has subtly changed. Eager for distraction, Martha welcomes the attentions of Thomas Randolph, her exotic distant cousin, but soon Martha uncovers burdens and desires in him that threaten to compromise her own.As her life becomes constrained by the demands of marriage, motherhood, politics, scandal, and her family’s increasing impoverishment, Martha yearns to find her way back to her childhood home; to the gentle beauty and quiet happiness of the world she once knew at the top of her father’s “little mountain.”An irresistible blend of emotional drama, historical detail, and vivid atmosphere, Monticello skillfully brings to life Martha Jefferson Randolph, a strong and compelling woman who influenced -- as much as she was influenced by -- one of the most intriguing figures in American history.

Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith


Dallin H. Oaks - 1975
    It places the infamous event at the Carthage jail (1846) and the subsequent murder-conspiracy trial in the context of Mormon and American legal history, and deals with the question of achieving justice when crimes are politically motivated and popularly supported.

Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God Son of Thunder


Benita N. Schindler - 1983
    Travelers sang ballads about him as they gathered around their campfires at night. Mothers used his name to frighten children into obedience. He was accused of literally hundreds of murders, all in the name of the Mormon Church. Yet behind all the myth was a man, a human being. Orrin Porter Rockwell believed in his prophet, Joseph Smith. He spent most of a year chained in an Independence dungeon for his belief, then walked across Missouri to Nauvoo, stumbling into Joseph’s house on Christmas Day. Joseph said to him then, “Cut not thy hair and no bullet or blade can harm thee,” and the legend was born.Rockwell continued to serve the leaders of his church—as hunter, guide, messenger, scout, guerilla, emissary to the Indians, and lawman. He traveled thousands of miles, raised three families, accumulated land and wealth—and favorably impressed almost everyone who met him. But although he walked with presidents and generals, scholars and scoundrels, in a life lived at the center of many of the great events of the American frontier, he has remained an enigma, a source of continuing controversy.Harold Schindler’s remarkable investigative skills led him into literally thousands of unlikely places in his search for the truth about Rockwell. Dale L. Morgan, one of the west’s foremost historians, called the first edition “…an impressive job of research, one of the most impressive in recent memory, in the Mormon field. Mr. Schindler has shown great energy and sagacity in dealing with a difficult, highly controversial subject; and he has also made maximum use of the latest scholarship and newly available archival resources.”But the author was not satisfied until he had probed even more deeply, and this revised and enlarged second edition contains greatly expanded documentation as well as textual additions that flesh out the characters and events of this classic drama of early America.

Listen, Learn and Love: Embracing LGBTQ Latter-day Saints


Richard Ostler - 2020
    I invite all to increase trust in and develop a relationship with Heavenly Father, which will enable all to make thoughtful, faith-based decisions going forward. This is true of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, their families, and Church leaders. We all have a place in the plan of happiness and I hope to provide a glimpse of that. But if for whatever reason, anyone decides not to stay, we can support them as they move forward with their lives rather than cut them off. We can keep the family circle together and leave the judging to our Savior and His perfect understanding.

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen


Sarah Bird - 2018
    According to her mother, she was a captive, bound by her noble warrior blood to escape the enemy. Her means of deliverance is Union general Phillip Henry “Smash ‘em Up” Sheridan, the outcast of West Point who takes the rawboned, prideful young woman into service. At war’s end, having tasted freedom, Cathy refuses to return to servitude and makes the monumental decision to disguise herself as a man and join the Army’s legendary Buffalo Soldiers.Alone now in the ultimate man’s world, Cathy must fight not only for her survival and freedom, but she vows to never give up on finding her mother, her little sister, and the love of the only man strong and noble enough to win her heart. Inspired by the stunning, true story of Private Williams, this American heroine comes to vivid life in a sweeping and magnificent tale about one woman’s fight for freedom, respect and independence.

The Revenant


Michael Punke - 2002
    He’s done it once already.Rocky Mountains, 1823. The trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is one of the most respected men in the company, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker.But when a scouting mission puts Glass face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two men from the company are ordered to remain with him until his inevitable death. But, fearing an imminent attack, they abandon Glass, stripping him of his prized rifle and hatchet.As Glass watches the men flee, he is driven to survive by one all-consuming desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, he sets out on a three-thousand-mile journey across the harsh American frontier, to seek revenge on the men who betrayed him.The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution. The novel that inspired the epic new movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.

Added Upon


Nephi Anderson - 1898
    Added Upon, published in 1898, is his most well known work. Added Upon tells the story of man's pre-mortal life through his death and the celestial glory awaiting. Anderson preaches the beliefs of his Mormon faith through his characters. This is a book full of inspiration and faith.

The Book of Harlan


Bernice L. McFadden - 2016
    After his prominent minister grandfather dies, Harlan and his parents move to Harlem, where he becomes a musician. Soon, Harlan and his best friend, trumpeter Lizard Robbins, are lured across the Atlantic Ocean to perform at a popular cabaret in the Parisian enclave of Montmartre—affectionately referred to as “The Harlem of Paris” by black American musicians.When the City of Light falls under Nazi occupation, Harlan and Lizard are thrown into Buchenwald, the notorious concentration camp in Weimar, Germany. The experience irreparably changes the course of Harlan’s life. Based on exhaustive research and told in McFadden’s mesmeric prose, The Book of Harlan skillfully blends the stories of McFadden’s familial ancestors with those of real and imagined characters.