You can purchase Unlocking wherever you buy your books!

Local bookstores in Calgary: Shelf Life Books, Pages Kensington, The Next Page, Owl’s Nest Books

Local bookstores in Edmonton: Glass Bookshop, Audreys Books

In store and Online: Indigo, Kobo & Amazon

Here’s what people are saying about Unlocking:

LeBlanc, winner of the 2020 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta’s Emerging Artist Award, is known for her poetry but has now made her mark in fiction with Unlocking. The book features unforgettable characters and a voice that captures the ebb and flow of heartbreak and grief. The narrative feels like a fantastic short story but with the depth of a great novel that you can’t put down.

—Heidi Klaassen, AlbertaViews

From a nosy nurse to Lou’s “new partner in crime,” LeBlanc shows a deft hand with light-hearted satire and farcical goings-on. The pairing of Lou’s reluctant and thoroughly amateur break-ins with Euphemia’s archness and mastermind pretences keeps the pages flipping.

—Brett Josef Grubisic, Quill & Quire

Lou Till’s parents have just died in strange circumstances, she has left her marriage and moved into her hardware store, and now she finds herself enmeshed in a dubious scheme with the sapient sower of seeds and secrets, Euphemia Rosenbaum. In Unlocking, Amy LeBlanc blends the propulsiveness of a murder mystery with the artistry of a literary novella. A gripping read, infused with unusual images and quiet humour.

—Rona Altrows, author of At This Juncture 

Unlocking captures the delightful idiosyncrasies of small-town Alberta, tinting the seemingly mundane with the extraordinary. Clues appear in a Scrabble game just as easily as eternal love emerges around a carrot. Playful, wry, and funny, Unlocking will remind you of those childhood moments, sneaking through the dark—the quietude teeming with mystery and emergence.

—Marc Herman Lynch author of Arborescent

Amy LeBlanc’s first full length work of fiction is a book of secrets and furtive conversations. Alert and precise, LeBlanc pays attention to the intricate beauty community brings a lost soul, introducing us to a world where the local author stockpiles his own books on a vanity shelf and the ancient gardener supplies a handful of, perhaps harmful, polypor to help a young girl find justice. Through LeBlanc’s vivid poetic relationship with language, the reader immediately understands the allure of the key and its direct link to all sorts of secrets.

—Lisa Murphy Lamb, author of Jesus on the Dashboard 

Reminiscent of Schitt’s Creek and Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches, Amy LeBlanc’s debut introduces us to a small town bursting at the seams with vivid detail and colourful characters – a community where everyone knows everyone, and everyone locks their doors. Reading Unlocking is like thumbing through a jingling key ring, hearing whispered memories emanating from dozens of tarnished and glittering keys, and then finally finding the one that fits.

—Bruce Cinnamon, author of The Melting Queen