The Boy Fortune Hunters is a series of six adventure novels for adolescent boys. The series was written by L. Frank Baum, using the pseudonym of Floyd Akers, and published by Reilly & Britton. Howard Heath illustrated the books.

The first book in the series was published in 1908, and the sixth and last in 1911. Advertising shows that the series continued to be sold until at least 1918. The books were bound in brown cloth, with an illustration on the front cover.

A newspaper advertisement promoted the series by stating: "The author has a knack of taking his readers into the various parts of the world and giving them not only the adventures that can be found there, but also a local color which proves to be instructive and entertaining."

In 1906 Baum, writing as Captain Hugh Fitzgerald, published the boys’ novel Sam Steele's Adventures on Land and Sea and he later wrote Sam Steele’s Adventures in Panama, but the books were not successful, so the publisher reissued them under new titles as the first two volumes of The Boy Fortune Hunters adventure series.

Starting in 1912, at least three volumes of the series — The Boy Hunters in Panama, The Boy Fortune Hunters in Alaska, and The Boy Fortune Hunters in China — were serialized in the Boys and Girls section of several Sunday newspapers, with a few chapters being printed each week, along with a synopsis of the last installment.

Adventure-loving Sam Steele, 16 years old in the first book, is the son of Captain Steele of the Seagull, and nephew of Naboth Perkins, who is supercargo on the same merchant ship. Ned Britton is captain's mate – the second-in-command. Two South Sea Islanders take part in Sam's adventures. Nux is ship's cook, and Bryonia is the cabin steward. Years before the first book took place the two black men were found in a canoe, tied up and nearly dead, and they were brought aboard Uncle Naboth's ship and treated with two patent medicines, Nux Vomica and Bryonia. At the time the men knew no English and couldn't tell their names, so they were named after the medicines that saved them, and they've answered to the names ever since.

Joe Herring is a little younger than Sam, and though fortune hunting has made him rich, he chooses to be the ship's cabin boy. He is a "slight, stooping lad", but is strong and agile. Archie Ackley is the same age as Sam, comes from a wealthy family, but is "a reckless, adventurous sort of chap", and often sails on the Seagull as a passenger.

(Formerly Sam Steele's Adventures On Land and Sea, by Capt. Hugh Fitzgerald)