Indigent

"Eat. They twisted in deeper. Eat. Still so simple. An impulse. Repeated again and again. Eat..."

"Acid-bath class struggle intermingles with parasitic terror in Briana N. Cox's slippery, slithering, symbiotically suffocating debut." - Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

"This damning portrayal of U.S. health care doubles as a potent, unforgettable creepfest." - Kirkus Reviews

LEIGH PIERCE ESTATES is home to a diverse array of tenants: families, immigrants, students, the forgotten elderly. All working poor, and all in danger.

Because the tenants of Leigh Pierce are disappearing.

Live-in handyman Xavier seems to be the only one who notices. Or cares. After a chance encounter with the culprit leaves him infected with something horrifying, Xavier is thrust into a surreal nightmare of starvation and consumption all too familiar to his gentrifying Atlanta neighborhood.

Succumbing to his infection, Xavier is drawn into the cobbled-together family squatting in Leigh Pierce's basement. People who, through a myriad of doomed roads, fell into the same self-destructive cycle of indigency, harboring dark secrets... and darker appetites. Trapped in a dynamic of codependency and complicity, Xavier and his family- new and old- are forced to confront the cost of survival in a world that has disregarded them.

Briana N Cox (she/they) is an author & screenwriter born and raised in rural Tennessee. She's the oldest of seven children and a first-generation college graduate with a Master's degree in speech-language pathology from Purdue University.

• Publisher: Briana N Cox
  
• Publish Date: March 20, 2026
  
• Pages: 376
  
• Language: English
  
• Type: Paperback
  
• EAN/UPC: 9798994032701
  
• Dimensions: 8.0 X 5.3 X 0.8 inches | 0.9 pounds
  
• BISAC Categories: Horror, Popular Fiction