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About the Book

P. Djèlí Clark's Ring Shout meets Alyssa Cole's When No One Is Watching in this creeping body horror novel following the tenants of an apartment complex in a gentrifying neighborhood, the parasitic infection they contract, and what they do to survive.

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.

About the Author

Briana N. Cox (she/they) is a speculative fiction writer based in Nashville, Tennessee. She is the oldest of seven children and a first-generation academic. She holds a BA in cognitive science from Swarthmore College and an MS in speech-language pathology from Purdue University. They have been highlighted in Variety magazine and were on the 2024 Next List of Screenwriters to Watch For. Briana writes genre stories from the margins, illuminating the experiences of overlooked demographics with authenticity, dignity, and dark humor. Indigent is their debut horror novel.

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Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon Maverick (October 6, 2026)
  • Runtime: 10 hours
  • ISBN13: 9781668198506

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Raves and Reviews

Acid-bath class struggle intermingles with parasitic terror in Briana N. Cox's slippery, slithering, symbiotically suffocating debut.

– Clay McLeod Chapman, award-winning author of Ghost Eaters and Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

[Cox] confidently delivers the genre goods, blending Cronenbergian body horror with a pervasive sense of doom. A touch of ambiguity (what exactly are those parasites?) heightens the suspense. . . . This damning portrayal of U.S. health care doubles as a potent, unforgettable creepfest.

– Kirkus

Cox doesn’t simply write horror; she excavates it from the fault lines of class disparity and medical injustice. . . . a haunting exploration of interconnectedness, survival, and the cost of being deemed disposable . . . [that] will linger with readers long after the final page.

– Faith Williams, Chicago Book Review

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