I am beginning the agent search for my literary novel, The Desert Witness, and I am reaching out to my broader network for recommendations.

I am particularly interested in reputable literary agents who represent serious literary fiction and have strong relationships with major publishing houses. I am already querying selectively, but I would value recommendations from authors, editors, publishing professionals or anyone who has worked directly with an agent they respect.

If someone comes to mind, please feel free to comment or message me directly.

An introduction would be especially appreciated, but even a name worth researching would be helpful.

Excerpt:

The Boy and the Warbler
 
Julian was still young enough to think that wanting to do a thing and doing it were almost the same act.

The morning had opened hot and clear over the California desert. Somewhere beyond the houses a car moved along the road with that soft, far-off sound it made in the summer, tires humming over heat and distance. A dog barked once, then again, and then gave up on whatever it thought mattered. The rest of the world seemed to hold still.

He had a gun in his hands and the day in front of him. At that age, that was enough to make a boy feel larger than he was.

The yards behind the houses ran together near the edge of things, where fences and weeds and dust worked out their own arrangements. The wire fencing caught the light in long pale lines. Here and there the ground broke into patches of shade beneath trees that somehow managed to hold on in that heat. Julian moved between sun and shadow without much purpose, only the kind boys gave themselves, looking, listening, kicking at the dirt, feeling the weight of the gun and the thrill of being trusted with it.

His grandfather was always telling him things.

Leave a gate the way you found it.
Do not point that thing where it does not belong.
Never shoot something you are not going to eat.

Julian had heard that last one enough times that it had settled somewhere in him without taking full shape. He knew it the way a boy knew weather or routine or the sound of his own name called from another room. He had nodded before. He had listened before. But rules rarely mean much until the day they stand up in front of what a person wants.