The literary world, front page first.

Across the realm of Tesaargo, a system that once looked structured and balanced is starting to fracture. The cause is the glyph. Its influence does not arrive suddenly or explosively. It spreads slowly and quietly, working its way into the frameworks that once defined order.

That gradual shift drives Glyph Bound, the second volume of Saptarshi Banerjee’s fantasy series Incidentals (The Conformation). Where the first book set up the world, this one shows what happens when its foundations start to move.

The change is clearest at High-Grid Academia, an institution founded on the belief that knowledge is neutral. As the glyph’s reach grows, that belief collapses. Learning is no longer separate from power. It becomes a channel through which deeper forces operate.

Sixth grader Jeremy Thatcher finds a strange magic shop he has never seen before. When he walks in, his life changes for good. He leaves Mr. Elives’s shop with an unusual marbled egg, and it soon becomes clear this is a pet he was not ready for.

How do you keep a fire-breathing dragon hidden in your bedroom? Especially one with razor-sharp teeth and an appetite that keeps growing. And if the baby dragon is going to grow into a magnificent creature of myth and legend, it needs Jeremy. Though he does not know it yet, Jeremy needs a dragon too.

Bruce Coville is an American author known for imaginative, heartfelt books for young readers. Across a career of more than four decades he has written over 100 books, including the Magic Shop series, the My Teacher Is an Alien books and the Unicorn Chronicles. His stories mix fantasy, humour and real-life lessons, and they encourage young readers to believe in themselves and in the extraordinary possibilities around them.

Michelle Burleigh spent much of her life questioning her worth and her purpose. In her book The Road to Courageous Living, she encourages others to do the same, not in doubt but in a spirit of discovery, strength and self-love.

In the days leading up to her thirty-seventh birthday, Burleigh received a life-changing diagnosis that showed her how fragile life can be. “I had spent years feeling like I never quite fit the mould,” she says. “That moment made me realise that if I was given a second chance, I would live on my own terms.”

That experience became the starting point for The Road to Courageous Living, a book that combines personal storytelling with practical tools for building self-belief, setting meaningful goals and creating a future that feels right for you.

Some love stories start with a meet-cute. Laura Hankin’s One-Star Romance starts with a scathing review. Natalie and Rob meet because their best friends are getting married, and from the start they agree on almost nothing, least of all a one-star verdict on a novel Natalie loves.

Over the following years, through weddings, birthdays, career changes and the ups and downs of their friends’ lives, Natalie and Rob keep being thrown together. Each meeting brings a new argument. Each argument shows a little more about who they really are. Hankin uses that long stretch of time to make a familiar enemies-to-lovers setup feel lived in and earned.

The novel is funny and sharp about creative ambition and criticism: what it means to make something, put it into the world, and have strangers judge it. It is also tender about the friendships that hold people together as their twenties turn into their thirties.