Indigent by Briana N Cox
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Leigh Pierce Estates is home to a diverse array of tenants: working mothers, immigrants, the forgotten elderly. All working poor—and all in danger.
Because the tenants of Leigh Pierce are disappearing.
Xavier, a young Black man living in an opiate-afflicted, gentrifying Atlanta neighborhood, is thrust into a surreal nightmare of starvation and consumption after a chance encounter leaves him infected with something horrifying.
Succumbing to his infection, Xavier is drawn into the cobbled-together family squatting in Leigh Pierce’s basement: A patriarch and matriarch from the Rust Belt whose health left with the Ford factories forty years ago, a first-gen American who learned that the institutions supposedly there to help were not a real option… People who, through a myriad of roads, fell into the same self-destructive cycle of indigency, harboring dark secrets and darker appetites.
Now, Xavier is forced to confront the cost of survival in a world that has disregarded him, lost in a messy family dynamic of codependency and complicity all too like what he’s used to—a dynamic he’s desperate to break.
Release date here: February 28, 2026
Other distributors: March 20, 2026
“Picture Nick Cutter’s The Troop adapted by Bong Joon Ho, where the acid-bath class struggle of Parasite intermingles with parasitic terror in Briana N Cox’s slippery, slithering, symbiotically suffocating debut.” —Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
“Briana N Cox has written Shivers for the Get Out generation with INDIGENT. A thoughtful, complex look at the intersection of gentrification and the ongoing opioid epidemic, as explored through the lens of a body-horror, creature-feature phantasmagoria.” —Preston Fassel, Our Lady of the Inferno
“With stunning, visceral prose and memorable characters, Briana N Cox deftly intertwines body horror and class consciousness to explore interconnection in its more terrifying expressions. INDIGENT writhes on the page and lingers with the reader long after.” —Tiffany Morris, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of Green Fuse Burning
“Utterly engrossing. Briana N Cox takes what slips through the cracks and brings it into the light. An intricate and searing examination of how the medical system fails those most in need. INDIGENT is devastatingly timely.” —Erin E. Adams, Jackal & One of You
“With INDIGENT, Briana N Cox has crafted a scathing indictment of America’s healthcare system wrapped in a tale that will creep under your skin… Not just because it’s an excellently written tale of horror, but because it reads all too real.” —Markus Redmond, Blood Slaves
“Both a sharp indictment of the US healthcare system and a tightly plotted thriller, INDIGENT will invade your mind and body and not let go even after you have read the final page.” —Johanna van Veen, best-selling author of Blood on Her Tongue