Kitty Kelley (born April 4, 1942) is an American (United States) investigative journalist and author of several best-selling unauthorized biographies of celebrities and politicians. Her subjects have included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, the British Royal Family, the Bush family, and in 2010 Oprah Winfrey. Described as a "poison pen" biographer, her profiles frequently contain unflattering personal anecdotes and details, and their accuracy is often questioned. Kelley?s book sales declined precipitously in the 21st century. While Kelley?s 1997 book (The Royals) entered USA TODAYs Best-Selling Books list at first place, her 2004 book (The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty) entered the list in second place, and her 2010 book (Oprah: A biography) entered the list in fifth place., Kelleys credibility and sources have been called into question multiple times and she has been accused of sloppy reporting, poor fact checking.,lying, misusing words badly misquoting, taking material out of context and violating agreements Former president Ronald Reagan has described Kelley?s work as containing "flagrant and absurd falsehoods" that "exceed the bounds of decency". and Barbara Walters said books like Kelley?s are all about finding dirt, not the truth.. The New York Times notes that Kelley "just aims for the jugular" and Frank Sinatra claimed Kelley "wrote the kind of lies that sell books and newspapers and magazines".

Time (Time (magazine)) magazine reported that most journalists believe Kelley "too frequently fails to bring perspective or analysis to the fruits of her reporting and at times lards her work with dollops of questionable inferences and innuendos." In addition, Kelley has been described by Joe Klein as a "professional sensationalist" and her books have been described as "Kitty litter." Maureen Dowd said "Kelley is a mean and greedy writer, so drunk on sensationalism that she lacks compassion and understanding."Larry King was quoted as saying "Shes very strange. She must have something wrong with her."

Kelleys work has faced legal challenges. Her book ?the Royals? was banned in Britain because it contained sensational assertions that Kelley would have reportedly been unable to defend in court, and the British media also found Kelley?s claims too potentially libelous to report on. According to the reporting of George Carpozi Jr., Kitty Kelley was sued over the content of her book Jackie Oh!, and settled the suit out of court. Carpozi also reported that under questioning from her publisher, Kelley confessed to having made up an intimate exchange of words between Jacqueline Onassis and columnist Pete Hamil in the manuscript of Jackie Oh!. Carpozi claims that Kelley faced legal consequences over her Elizabeth Taylor biography too, being compelled to delete disputed material and make substantial changes to what she had written when the book emerged in paperback.

Kitty Kelley has been called "the consummate gossip monger, a vehicle for all the rumor and innuendo surrounding her illustrious subjects" but maintains that her writing is about "moving an icon out of the moonlight and into the sunlight". Her work has been called "encylopedically vicious" but has also been cited as an antidote to celebrity mythmaking. "Her methods may often be unsound, her facts may sometimes be a bit fictional, but in the end she usually reveals something true about her subjects?which is more than you can say about a lot of celebrity biographers."

When citing sources for her work, Kelley has been known to raise morre questions than she answers. In her biography of Frank Sinatra, Kelley claimed to have an interviewed actor Peter Lawford on several occasions including November 5 and 6 of 1984, even though Lawford lay on his death bed on these dates after part of his stomach was removed. Kelley also claimed to have interviewed Lawford on January 5, 1985, even though the actor had died in December 1984. As of 1991, nearly one hundred people who Kelly claims to have interviewed have come forward on the public record to claim they never at any time spoke with her.