Like Lions

By: Brian Panowich

Narrated by: Brian Troxell

Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's Summary

A powerful follow-up to award-winning debut Bull Mountain.  

Brian Panowich burst onto the crime fiction scene in 2015, winning awards and accolades for his smoldering debut, Bull Mountain. Now, with Like Lions, he cements his place as one of the outstanding new voices in crime fiction.  

Clayton Burroughs is a small-town Georgia sheriff, a new father, and, improbably, the heir apparent of Bull Mountain’s most notorious criminal family. As he tries to juggle fatherhood, his job, and his recovery from being shot in the confrontation that killed his two criminally inclined brothers last year, he’s doing all he can just to survive. Yet after years of carefully toeing the line between his life in law enforcement and his family, he finally has to make a choice.  

When a rival organization makes a first foray into Burroughs' territory, leaving a trail of bodies and a whiff of fear in its wake, Clayton is pulled back into the life he so desperately wants to leave behind. Revenge is a powerful force, and the vacuum left by his brothers’ deaths has left them all vulnerable.  

With his wife and child in danger and the way of life in Bull Mountain under siege for everyone, Clayton will need to find a way to bury the bloody legacy of his past once and for all.

©2019 Brian Panowich (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Critic Reviews

“Brian Panowich’s glorious return to Bull Mountain is another sprawling, brutal, no-holds-barred novel that held me in a death grip from page one until it kicked me out of the door with an ending I never saw coming.” (C.J. Box, author, Wolf Pack)

"Brian Panowich makes a triumphant return to Bull Mountain, Georgia, in his second novel, Like Lions, as he continues to mix crime fiction with a violent family drama, perfectly melding characters with a sense of place." — Associated Press

Justified + Deliverance = Like Lions

One cannot read this without first reading Bull Mountain. When you've read Bull Mountain, you MUST read Like Lions. The title makes no sense but don't let that stop you.

If you enjoyed the TV series Justified you will enjoy this ... if you didn't, you probably won't. I did... and I did.

Melodramatic

Started off okay but got so dramatic that I stopped caring with 45 minutes left

Not up to his first in the series.

A fairly interesting story, but not up to his first effort. Lots of flashbacks and story dwells and depends too much on protagonist's struggle with alcoholism. I was a bit disappointed.

Really Good

Panowich has written one even better then Bull Mountain. Reminded me a lot of Hunter’s Dirty White Boys.

great part two

perfect follow up to bull mountain. and the end was a huge surprise and very heart warming. I wish there were going to be more to this series! thats how good these books were. and Im usually a horror lover..but this author and these books were simply OUTSTANDING!!!

I’d you loved Bull Mountain, this book is for you!

Great story! I really enjoyed Bull Mountain, so was excited to see this new book. It did not disappoint! I didn’t see the twist at the very end coming at all!! Now to wait for the next Brian Panowich novel.

Skip Part 2

The first part, Bull Mountain, was OK. I was entertained enough to get part 2. Awful. There is very little story and a ton of backwoods, backwards brutality. Doesn't speak well of Georgia. No thanks. 👎

lots of red neck dialog and drama

but not much substance or character. The plot seemed to rely on people not bothering to understand or listen, and both dialog and personal narrative were full if hackneyed southern idiom. I liked the first book, but was sorry that I listened to this.

Bull Mountain is great, Like Lions is better...

I grew up in the small town of Harlem, Ga. Many of the places and landmarks Panowich uses are part of my upbringing. Pollard’s Corner, Pair of Jack’s, Pumpkin Center...hell, I fished Boneville pond more times then I can count. But besides my familiarity with the places around Bull Mountain, these novels give us characters that are so “real”, especially if you grew up in small town Georgia. Characters like the Buroghs and the Viners are people I can picture and place amongst my friends and enemies from my childhood.

I highly recommend Like Lions. It is the right mix of violence, grittiness, and suspense that makes it an page turner and a book I couldn’t put down. Much like in Bull Mountain, Panowich paints pictures with his prose. He is a modern day Flannery O’Connor, but injects his own poetic view of the real South.

Another Great Entry in the Bull Mountain Series!

The second book in the Bull Mountain series was as good as the first. Clayton Burroughs survived a shooting by the FBI, but he is not the same. Back to drinking heavily, his marriage is rocky, and the choices he is making are not great. Clayton is shattered man, and he is no longer the principled man that he once was. This book, like the first, is dark and gritty, and I loved it. You either love books like this, or you don’t, and I certainly do! It is about flawed characters who have stepped on both sides and know where they need to be. I won’t say more; I highly recommend this series if you are looking for something different. I listened to this on audiobook via Audible and the narrator Brian Troxell did an excellent job bringing the story to life. I am looking forward to the next episode in the series. I gave this 4 stars.