Why am I passionate about this?

When I was six, my father, a tall, bearded naval officer, read me Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” I thought it might be autobiography. Ever since, I've been fascinated by stories where fantasy and reality meet and blend. I studied English literature, taught Dead English Poets to undergraduates, became an editor/writer for hire. Along the way, I canoed, hiked the Rockies, and learned to sail a traditional Nova Scotian schooner. I have two sons, to whom I read stories night after night when they were much younger than they are now. Since retiring, I write fantasy adventure novels set aboard real sailing ships and stories about dragons who talk to exceptional people.


I wrote

The Laughing Princess

By Seymour Hamilton,

Book cover of The Laughing Princess

What is my book about?

My book is about dragons of great power and authority. While Petra and Daniel are on holiday, Daniel finds a…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Tombs of Atuan

Seymour Hamilton Why did I love this book?

The second of LeGuin’s Earthsea books is a story made of fantasy, adventure, horror, mystery, and myth. 

Tenar, the high priestess must choose between her lifelong training and her unexpected compassion for a thief named Ged, who she must execute in the Tombs of Atuan. Tenar leads Ged through darkness and terror to a place where she decides who she will become.

LeGuin’s prose is direct, evocative, and compelling. Read out loud, the story is spellbinding. It stays with me even though it’s years since my first reading. Each time I return to the fantastic yet entirely believable world she created, the characters I meet reveal some fresh insight into what it is to be human.

By Ursula K. Le Guin,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Tombs of Atuan as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 9, 10, 11, and 12.

What is this book about?

The second book of Earthsea in a beautiful hardback edition. Complete the collection with A Wizard of Earthsea, The Furthest Shore and Tehanu

With illustrations from Charles Vess

'[This] trilogy made me look at the world in a new way, imbued everything with a magic that was so much deeper than the magic I'd encountered before then. This was a magic of words, a magic of true speaking' Neil Gaiman

'Drink this magic up. Drown in it. Dream it' David Mitchell

In this second novel in the Earthsea series, Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless…


Book cover of Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar

Seymour Hamilton Why did I love this book?

I love Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar for its magic realism. For me, the story reads as real, even when it travels into the fantastic. Jess Wells’ writing is like music: it goes on singing in the back of my mind long after I’ve closed the book.

Jaguar Paloma is a larger than life woman in a setting that is more intense than everyday reality. Strong and vulnerable, audacious and cunning, Jaguar’s compassion inspires a splendid collection of men and women.

By Jess Wells,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1865 in the shanty town of Tartatenango, the Caketown Bar is owned by the extraordinary Jaguar Paloma, matriarch of a village that is home to raucous miscreants, cast-off mothers, muleteers, and forgers. Amid drunken monks, a roaring trade in faked marriages just for fun, and the Romani, all balance on the knife-edge between legality and the illicit. Paloma’s life is honed by this community, as their lives are affected by her mystery and magic.

Co-founder of this extraordinary gathering is Orietta Becerra. Breathtakingly beautiful and ambitious, her distillery builds the success of Caketown. But when she crosses the tracks…


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Book cover of Price of Vengeance

Price of Vengeance By Kurt D. Springs,

Liam was orphaned at the age of two by a group of giant carnivorous insects called the chitin. Taken in by High Councilor Marcus and his wife, Lidia, Liam was raised with their older son, Randolf in New Olympia, the last remaining city on the planet Etrusci.

As an adult,…

Book cover of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles

Seymour Hamilton Why did I love this book?

I was captivated by these stories from the moment I read the title of the first chapter: “In which Cimorine refuses to be proper and has a conversation with a frog.”

Cimorene is a young woman with no intention of being rescued by a knight in armour. She prefers the company of the dragon for whom she is princess in residence.  

These books re-imagine traditional princess stories through a woman’s eyes. Cimorene and her adventures are light-hearted, but as children (and parents who read to them) encounter wicked wizards, wonderful witches, magical carpets, swords, and castles they will celebrate this princess as the tough-minded lady Patricia Wrede has made her.

By Patricia C. Wrede,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Enchanted Forest Chronicles as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, and 12.

What is this book about?

Collected together for the first time in a digital format are Patricia C. Wrede's hilarious adventure stories about Cimorene, the princess who refuses to be proper. Every one of Cimorene's adventures is included—Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons, and Talking to Dragons—in a single ebook.


Book cover of Darkover Landfall

Seymour Hamilton Why did I love this book?

I have revisited Darkover Landfall often, but it never loses its hold on my imagination. It’s the Darkover novels’ origin story, telling what happens when an interstellar colonizing starship goes off course and crash-lands on an uncharted planet. In essence, this is Science Fiction, except that the earth-like planet has fantastic creatures, some of them with paranormal powers.

The castaways include a few hard-nosed scientific professionals who expect to lead many industrious generalists who plan to colonize a new world. All must recognize that the technology that brought them to Darkover will not sustain them unless they adapt, learn, and unlearn. It’s a story to make us wonder what we really need from our planet and each other.

By Marion Zimmer Bradley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Darkover Landfall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Darkover, planet of wonder, world of mystery, has been a favorite of science fiction fans for many years. For it is a truly alien sphere - a world of strange intelligences, of brooding skies beneath a ruddy sun, and of powers unknown to Earth. In this novel, Marion Zimmer Bradley tells of the original coming of the Earthmen, of the days when Darkover knew not humanity.

This is the full-bodied novel of what happened when a colonial starship crash-landed on that uncharted planet to encounter for the first time in human existence the impact of the Ghost Wind, the psychic…


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Book cover of One Giant Leap

One Giant Leap By Ben Gartner,

I’m pretty sure I’m about to die in space. And I just turned twelve and a half.

Blast off with the four winners of the StellarKid Project on a trip to the International Space Station and then to the Gateway outpost orbiting the Moon! It’s a dream come true until…

Book cover of The Hobbit

Seymour Hamilton Why did I love this book?

The Hobbit—the book, not the film—is the perfect story for a father to read to his children at bedtime. It begins outside Bilbo’s underground home in front of its round, green door on which Gandalf scrapes a secret mark to be read by thirteen dwarves. Like Bilbo’s road to adventure, the story goes on and on, pausing regularly for father to tuck us in to sleep, perhaps to dream. Thanks to the promise of Bilbo’s subtitle “There and Back Again,” we close our eyes without fear of nightmares about trolls, dwarves, elves, goblins, spiders, and dragons. Night after night, reading after reading, Bilbo Baggins returns to surprise us with his courage, and ingenuity born of common sense.

By J.R.R. Tolkien,

Why should I read it?

51 authors picked The Hobbit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Special collector's film tie-in hardback of the best-selling classic, featuring the complete story with a sumptuous cover design inspired by THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY and brand new reproductions of all the drawings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End.

But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey 'there and back again'. They have a plot to raid…


Explore my book 😀

The Laughing Princess

By Seymour Hamilton,

Book cover of The Laughing Princess

What is my book about?

My book is about dragons of great power and authority. While Petra and Daniel are on holiday, Daniel finds a curious stone that hatches into a tiny dragon who tells them stories about a young princess, a retired wizard, a blind man in love, a boy who can’t laugh, a thief-of-hearts musician, a fearsome warrior, a girl who asked for too much, a lonely poet, a dying witch, and a queen who faced a pirate. Each story involves a different dragon, some caring, some heartless, all bringing change to those who summon them.

It’s beautifully illustrated by Shirley, and there’s an audio version, free on Scribl.com, read by me. 
Book cover of The Tombs of Atuan
Book cover of Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar
Book cover of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles

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