Author Lee Hoffman died of a heart attack on 6 February 2007. Born Shirley Bell Hoffman in Chicago in 1932, she published the fanzines Quandry and Science-Fiction Five-Yearly in the 1950s. She went on to write four science fiction novels: Telepower, The Caves of Karst, Always the Black Knight, and Change Song.
She was better known for her 17 Western novels, including The Valdez Horses, for whiuch she won the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award. The Valdez Horses was made into a 1973 film by the same name, which starred Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland.