Francis M. Gibbons (1921 to 2016) was a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for thirty years, a former secretary to the First Presidency and a prolific biographer of LDS Church presidents.

Born in Arizona in 1921, Elder Gibbons forged a remarkable life as a student, missionary, husband, father, lawyer and local church leader. Then, in his late forties, he was called as the secretary to the First Presidency. Over the succeeding decades he gave the most significant service of his life, serving as secretary to the First Presidency under four different Presidents of the Church—Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball and Ezra Taft Benson—and then as a General Authority of the Church for three decades. In mid life Elder Gibbons also commenced his literary career, and became the most prolific and well-known biographer of Church Presidents of all time, writing full-length biographies on all of the Mormon Prophets. To date fourteen of those biographies have been published by Deseret Book Company, and are among the best-selling works of LDS biography of all time.

Daniel Bay Gibbons was born and educated in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has degrees in history and law and was a trial attorney for fifteen years before serving for ten years as a criminal trial judge in suburban Salt Lake County. He loves reading and has a home library of about 10,000 books. He is also an experienced marathon runner, having completed seven full marathons and several half marathons. Fluent in German and Russian, he has lived for two years in Germany and for three years in Russia. He has also studied ancient Greek and Hebrew. He has been happily married to Julie Glenn Gibbons for thirty-eight years, and they have five children and nine grandchildren.

Dan’s varied volunteer activities include: creating one of the most successful elementary school chess clubs in the State of Utah; hosting a weekly radio talk show, "Saturday's Lawyer," on legal topics for a period of six years; lecturing over a period of ten years at law schools in Ukraine and Moldova on the American jury trial; serving as one of the first members of the Holladay City Council; and serving in numerous leadership and teaching positions in the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including twice as a bishop, as a temple ordinance worker, as a Clearance Analyst in the Church's Missionary Department, and as President of the Russia Novosibirsk Mission from 2011 to 2014. He is currently serving as the Young Men President in the Cottonwood Third Ward.

Dan is the author of twenty-one books, including "Nethermost: Missionary Miracles in Lowly Places," "Sixteen Characteristics of Great Missionaries," and the "Old Charlie" series of historical novels. He also writes legal and international thrillers under a pen name. Dan is also the co-owner and publisher, with his wife, Julie, of the small independent imprint, Sixteen Stones Press, which publishes 40 separate titles in 86 different editions.