On the TutsPlus.com site they've posted a guide sharing some of the new features that have come with the 5.2 version of the Laravel framework. With v5.3 on the horizon, it's good to get a solid base with 5.2 first.

In this article, I will take a look at the new features of Laravel 5.2 and describe them one by one. The new features are [...]: implicit route model binding, form array validation, API rate-limiting middleware, middleware groups, authentication scaffold and multiple authentication guard drivers

The post then goes through each of these topics providing a bit of explanation of what they're about and how they can be useful. There's also snippets of code included where helpful to show off the feature and provide a more useful example.