Awards that Patterson has won for his mystery novels include the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the BCA Mystery Guild's Thriller of the Year, the Reader's Digest Reader's Choice Award and the International Thriller of the Year Award.
After a long run of success with the mystery genre, Patterson eventually branched out to romance, non-fiction and children's books. In 2010, he won the Children's Choice Book Council's Children's Choice Awards "Author of the Year" Award. In addition to those awards, he is the first author to ever have two simultaneous titles on the New York Times Best Sellers list; one on the children's list and one on the adult list. He also earned a Guinness World Record in 2009 for having the highest number of novels ever published.
Patterson's best-selling books are his Alex Cross series, which feature an African-American forensic psychologist who formerly worked for the FBI and the Washington Police Department, and now works as a freelance government psychologist. Patterson’s other best-selling series characters include Detective Michael Bennett; the complex women from the Women's Murder Club books; and the children from Maximum Ride, Daniel X and the Witch & Wizard series. Besides these popular characters and series, he has several thrillers, nonfiction and romance novels that stand alone and are not part of a series.
Patterson has also had several of his novels adapted to film, including Child of Darkness, Child of Light, Kiss the Girls, Miracle on the 17th Green, Along Came a Spider, 1st to Die, Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas, James Patterson's Sundays at Tiffany's, I, Alex Cross and Maximum Ride. Patterson's Woman's Murder Club series was adapted to a TV series focusing on one of several main characters, Inspector Lindsay Boxer.
James Patterson himself has also branched into the TV business. In 2007, he had a voice cameo on the popular Fox series The Simpsons. He also has a recurring cameo appearance in Castle, an ABC mystery series, as himself.
In 2008, Patterson established ReadKiddoRead.com, a personal accomplishment for him. Patterson, along with his wife Susan, created the website to help parents encourage children of all ages to read books that excite them. Patterson created this site in response to the personal frustration he felt while trying to get his young son, Jack, then eight, to fall in love with reading. The site easily helps parents, teachers and librarians find books that children will love to read by sorting fun-to-read books about various topics into age-appropriate categories. Patterson feels this is very important because, according to him, the earlier children learn to love books, the more likely they are to embrace reading as adults. He also points out that the more children read, the better readers they will become in the future.
Patterson continues to write novels every day. Whether he is working with a co-author, adding to one of his many series or writing a stand-alone novel, he is continually working to write novels that readers want to read. Sometimes he is working on as many as thirty novels in different stages at one time. The one thing readers can always expect from Patterson is that his novels will be of excellent caliber.