James Patterson

James Patterson, Jr. (born March 22, 1947), an American novelist best known for his thriller and suspense books, who always has a ubiquitous presence on best-seller lists in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He was the first person to sell one million e-books, and his novels have sold more than 300 million copies.

The Thomas Berryman Number (1976), his debut novel, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for an outstanding first novel from the Mystery Writers of America. Patterson's approach to writing fiction had changed by the early 1990s, and he had chosen a style characterized by plain prose, bite-sized chapters, and fast-paced, simplified narratives. Patterson topped Forbes' list of highest-paid authors for the third year in a row in 2016, earning $95 million. Over the span of a decade, his total earnings are projected to be $700 million.

Famous Books: Along Came a Spider, The Angel Experiment, 1st to Die,...