March is Women's History Month.

In the United States, this month is devoted to the many contributions of women to history. At left are legendary U.S. suffrage leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) and Susan B. Anthony.

For those looking for an account of the struggle by U.S. women for the vote, read Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens. Other resources about women's history may be found at the National Women's History Project and the National Women's History Museum; I also like this terrific resource on the history of women in law enforcement.

Those who'd like a dash of women's history in their mystery reading might enjoy the following:

• Ellis Peters's The Virgin in the Ice and Sharan Newman's Death Comes as Epiphany show the lives of medieval women in religious orders.

• Glynis Tryon series by Miriam Grace Monfredo, starting with The Seneca Falls Inheritance, which features several suffrage leaders.

• Nell Bray series by Gillian Linscott, which features a disciple of British suffragists Emmaline and Christabel Pankhurst; the first novel in the series is Sister Beneath the Sheet. One of the best novels in the series is Hanging On the Wire, which deals with recuperating soldiers during World War I. Another mystery with a suffragist main character is Clare Langley-Hawthorne's Consequences of Sin.
  

• Anne Perry's series with Crimean War nurse Hester Latterly; a novel of particular interest is Slaves of Obsession, where Hester serves in the American Civil War.

• My chapter in Amelia Peabody's Egypt: A Compendium (ed. Elizabeth Peters and Kristen Whitbread) covers the women's history aspects in Peters's popular series featuring intrepid Victorian archaeologist Amelia Peabody Emerson (partially based on real-life Egyptologist and bestselling author Amelia B. Edwards).

• Mysteries that involve American women writers include Houses of Stone (under Peters's Barbara Michaels pseudonym); and Joanne Dobson's Quieter than Sleep (involving Emily Dickinson), The Northbury Papers (based on successful writer E. D. E. N. Southworth), and Cold and Pure and Very Dead (based on Peyton Place's Grace Metalious).