My wife is looking for an reliable semi for her small hands that doesn't require a lot of strength to release the slide (she cannot deal with my G17's slide) and is pretty easy to manage from a recoil standpoint. We do plan on spending many weekends shooting as many varieties as possible (and have begin the process), but given the multitude of choices out there I wanted to see if anyone could point us in the right direction.

So far she likes the older P228, P238, P239 and Walther PPS and PPK (in 380). Glocks seem to be too wide for her hands.

Her final requirement is that it has suitable stopping power. Now I'm not sure a .380 fits the bill, but she seems to like a lot of these already. I would like it to be 9mm given the stores of ammo I've been "collecting", but I guess I can start buying something else if necessary. Don't really have a price-point, but we probably don't want to spend more than $1,500. Less is certainly better since she'll need lots of training courses. Heck, I can use some too.

Thanks in advance.