The Sons of Brabant (The Devil's Bible, #1)

Europe is on fire. Fuelled by religion, politics and power, war rages across the continent, pitting father against son, and brother against brother.
In the wake of such conflict come horrific famine and deadly plagues. Rumours begin to surface of the End of Days, of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the violent Renaissance of Mankind.
As Europe burns, betrayal and feuding rages in the Brabant family. Why does Reinald, the powerful yet dishonest Duke fear his younger siblings so? How will headstrong Leo and noble Willem outsmart their older brother, and take back what is rightfully theirs? And what of Isabella, their troublesome younger sister, whose fiery temper lands her in love and in trouble...
Vowing to put right the wrongs of their family and bring an end to their brother's deadly plans, Willem, Leo and Isabella must chart a course through war, famine and pestilence.
Meanwhile Reinald forms an unlikely and deadly alliance with a megalomaniac, a warmonger, and a deranged yet brilliant scientist, hell-bent on seeing their holy mission through to its grisly conclusion.
Can the Sons of Brabant survive? Help appears from the most unlikely of places...

It took Michael Bolan over two decades of running in the corporate ratrace to realise that all he actually did was tell stories.
There was no Damascene revelation for Bolan which caused him to pen his first work of fiction, "The Sons of Brabant". An avid reader, he simply felt that he could do as good a job as many of the authors he read and decided to put his money where his mouth was.
Living and working in many countries left him with smatterings of a dozen languages and their stories, and his love for history focused his ideas on the Thirty Years War, the most destructive conflict that the continent has ever seen.
Now living in Prague (for the second time), Michael brings alive the twisted alleys of the 17th century and recreates the brooding darkness of a fractured Europe, where no-one was entirely sure who was fighting whom.
Michael writes while liberally soused in gin, a testament to Franz de le Boë, who was mixing oil of juniper with neat spirit while the thirty Years War raged around him.