-
See Our Best Book
Club Books of 2026!
Summary | Discuss | Reviews | More Information | More Books
A powerful follow up to the multiple award-winning debut Bull Mountain.
Brian Panowich burst onto the crime fiction scene in 2015, winning awards and accolades from readers and critics alike 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.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (09-25-2025)
...d Nightshade by Michael Connelly for a book club. Just saw him a couple of weeks ago at Bouchercon. What a nice and humble man. I'm also listening to Like Lions by Brian Panowich, whom I also met at Bouchercon.
-Louise_H
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (09-18-2025)
This week I am reading Lolita for Book Browse. It's interesting being in the mind of a depraved man. I'm also listening to Like Lions by Brian Panowich who I saw at Bouchercon this year. So far this has been good to listen to. Characters are interesting. Last week I read the Frozen River which, for m...
-Louise_H
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (09-11-2025)
This week I am reading Lolita for Book Browse. It's interesting being in the mind of a depraved man. I'm also listening to Like Lions by Brian Panowich who I saw at Bouchercon this year. So far this has been good to listen to. Characters are interesting. Last week I read the Frozen River which, for m...
-Louise_H
"Starred Review. Excellent...It's the emotional complexity of Burroughs ... as well as the brass knuckle punch of an ending that will have readers applauding. This is hillbilly noir at its finest." - Publishers Weekly
Panowich is a terrific storyteller with a way with words ... Fine country noir." - Booklist
"Action and reflection are skillfully balanced in a vigorously written, trenchant tale." - Kirkus 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
"Brian Panowich's new novel, Like Lions, is 272 pages of pure-dee rompin', stompin', ass-kickin' reader's delight." - Daniel Woodrell
"If Elmore Leonard and Flannery O'Connor had a love child who grew up reading William Faulkner, pulp fiction, and a Shakespearean tragedy or two, he'd write like Brian Panowich. His characters are knotty, tangled people who try and fail and frustrate yet keep going, fueled by something as bone deep as family or fear, or both…You're in for a hell of a ride." - Christopher Swann, author of Shadow of the Lions
This information about Like Lions was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: David Kernaghan
Brian Panowich is an award winning author, a Georgia firefighter, and a father to four incredible children. His first novel, Bull Mountain, was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, ITW Thriller Award winner for Best First Novel, Southern Book Prize winner, and a finalist for both the Anthony and the Barry Awards. He lives in Georgia with his family.
Link to Brian Panowich's Website
Name Pronunciation
Brian Panowich: PAN-oh-wich
The Sister's Curse
by Nicola Solvinic
The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes
by Chanel Cleeton
The Vanishing Place
by Zoë Rankin
 (1).gif)
Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
