I don't read nearly as many books as I'd like to featuring action heroines (lack of time to read, and competing priorities, being the biggest problems there). But one series that I think deserves a thread here is Madeleine E. Robins' Sarah Tolerance series. (I recently finished the first book, Point of Honour.) Sarah's a tough, smart, streetwise P.I. who packs a pair of pistols and knows how to hold her own in a fight, with or without weapons, tracking evil-doers on the mean streets of London. So far, you might say that she sounds much like any of the new breed of combat-capable female sleuths who've sprung up in the last 30 years, ladies like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone or Linda Barnes' Carlotta Carlyle. But Sarah's London is the London of 1810, a world where nobody knows what a "P.I." is --she bills herself as an "agent of inquiry." (Actually, it's a slightly alternate London, in an England where Queen Charlotte, not Prince George, is Regent.) So Robins' literary vision has its own very unique twist; her world is that of a gritty Regency, one we might describe as Jane Austen meeting The Maltese Falcon. As the disgraced and disowned daughter of a baronet, who ran away with her brother's now-dead fencing master (he taught her excellent sword skills, which come in handy since her pistols are one-shot flintlocks that aren't as useful as, say, a Beretta semi-auto would be) Sarah's what her society considers a "Fallen Woman," but she doesn't choose to descend to the expected path of prostitution or concubinage; she's lost none of her guts, self-reliance and sense of honor, and she intends to earn an honest living for herself, even if she has to invent the profession of detective to do it. If you enjoy reading about female sleuths who can give their two-fisted male counterparts a run for their money, you definitely should check out Sarah's adventures!