Patrick Stewart, the classically trained stage actor who scaled the Shakespearean canon and added gravitas to a “Star Trek” franchise and the “X-Men” films, has died. He was 86.

Stewart died Wednesday in Los Angeles, following “a brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy Body Dementia, spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak said.

While best known as Professor Charles Xavier and Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the "X-Men" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation" series and films, respectively, Stewart spent more of his career onstage than in the X-Mansion or on the USS Enterprise.

Besides playing everyone from Claudius to Macbeth, he often performed a one-man rendition of "A Christmas Carol" and did West End and Broadway runs of Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" and Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in repertoire with buddy Ian McKellen.

Whether you’re looking for a scary book that will make you want to leave the lights on, or something thematic that won’t cost you sleep, these books from recent editions of Ask a Bookseller will help you get in the mood for spooky season.

Thrills and chills

“Her Last Breath” by Taylor Adams

Jackie Fuchs of The Book Keepers in Hutchinson says “Her Last Breath” is a twisty thriller-mystery that kept her guessing. With a killer lose in a cave deep underground, this is not a book for the claustrophobic, unless, like Fuchs, you believe in exposure therapy through reading.

“Witchcraft for Wayward Girls” by Grady Hendrix

Fun-fact: Horror master Grady Hendrix is one of the most commonly recommended authors in our series! Coco Casey of Buxton Books in Charleston, S.C., recommended “Witchcraft for Wayward Girls,” about a group of pregnant teenage girls in a maternity home who discover a spell book that pulls them into the world of witchcraft and the supernatural. The horror in this book, however, lies in the girls’ real-life situation, which is historically based.

“The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones

Horror master Stephen Graham Jones’ name has also come up more than once over the years. Ben Mayne of Tattered Cover Book Store in Littleton, Colo., recommends “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” for fans of “Sinners” and “Interview with a Vampire.”

"Throughout the story, you kind of side with him a little bit, and then you hate him again, and then you kind of realize that he might not be the bad guy in this conversation that they're having,” Mayne said. “It's super emotional, terrifying.”

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“The September House” by Carissa Orlando

Ryan Elizabeth Clark of Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, N.H., places “The September House” atop her list of horror favorites: “Carissa Orlando has taken the haunted house trope, flipped it on its head, and given us a brilliantly clever novel about so much more than ghosts.”

Books about ghosts and mortality ... that aren’t scary

“The Great Wherever” by Shannon Sanders

In “The Great Wherever,” four opinionated ghosts haunt the family farm they should have inherited and try to influence their descendants’ decisions over what to do with the land. Victoria Ford of Comma, a bookshop in Minneapolis says the writing in this debut novel is wry and atmospheric.

“I See You’ve Called in Dead” by John Kenney

Christina Tabereaux of The Snail on the Wall in Huntsville, Ala., recommends the novel, “I See You’ve Called in Dead,” about an obituary writer who, at a drunken low point one evening, publishes his own obituary and finds himself on leave. Told with dark humor and heart, this is a novel about grappling with legacy and choosing life and friends.

“Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt” by Ben Reeves

The main character in this book is Death, himself, and his name is Travis. He is there to comfort, though not intervene, at a person’s final moments, though his job becomes a bit more complicated when he’s pulled into the daily lives of his neighbors. Amy Erickson of Detroit Lakes says "Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt" is beautifully written and woven with vignettes, large and small, about the lives of myriad characters.

“The Hounding” by Xenobe Purvis

Mary Ellen Phillips of Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colo., recommends the historical fiction novel “The Hounding.” Set in Oxfordshire, England, in 1700, this story about a rumor-gone-wild has Salem witch trial vibes. The treatment of women and women’s health is central to this story, which is packed with strange-but-true historical details.

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On Thursday the Minneapolis City Council voted 9-4 to dissolve the Office of Community Safety and move some of its responsibilities elsewhere.

Progressives on the council have pushed to cut the office, arguing it hasn’t been effective and the move would save the city money as it faces a budget shortfall of tens of millions of dollars. Council members Pearll Warren and LaTrisha Vetaw, who often align with the mayor, joined the vote to dissolve the office.

Council member Robin Wonsley, who opposed the office’s creation in 2022, has championed eliminating the office and said Thursday it “has failed to rein in” police overspending. The Minneapolis Police Department has overspent its overtime budget every year since 2019.

“It has functioned more as a public relations exercise than an institution capable of delivering meaningful reform,” Wonsley said.

The office was created by the mayor and council in 2022. It was meant to provide improved coordination of emergency services, including police, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. The office oversees five public safety departments: fire, 911, police, emergency management and neighborhood safety.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey proposed the office after a ballot initiative — championed by progressives on the council at the time — to replace Minneapolis police with a public safety department was rejected by voters. Safety department heads report to the commissioner of the Office of Community Safety, who then reports to the mayor. Without the office, safety department heads would report directly to the mayor.

Council member Soren Stevenson argued the commissioner of the Office of Community Safety hasn’t had enough power to truly serve as a watchdog for the police.

“Our commissioner of Community Safety, while paid in total compensation $375,000 a year, does not have authority over the police chief to hire, fire, or do discipline,” Stevenson said.

“What that means is that when there's something going on and there's a tension between those two, the police chief can say… ‘I'm not going to listen to you,’” he added.

Several council members agreed that reform and budget tightening are needed but said the Office of Community Safety has served an important role. Council member Michael Rainville said it deserved more patience.

Council member Elizabeth Shaffer said there should be reductions in salary and personnel within the office and that it hasn’t always lived up to its oversight role.

“Yet has the Office of Community Safety made strides in coordinating communication between silos of public safety in our city? Absolutely. Has OCS demonstrated leadership in public safety crisis situations? Yes,” Shaffer said.

Council member Jamison Whiting cited testimony from the heads of the 911, emergency management and neighborhood safety departments given at a committee meeting Tuesday.

“The people doing the work on the ground said the exact same thing: that without the advocacy of OCS, without the sole focus on policing alternatives, this work falls away,” Whiting said.

Neighborhood Safety Director Amanda Harrington told the council Tuesday that the Office of Community Safety commissioner had made the police department work with her.

Frey has said the office has effectively coordinated safety services.

“Instead of moving us forward, the very council members who once advocated to consolidate these programs under a single umbrella now seek to silo them again,” Frey wrote in an Oct. 27 statement.

Frey also pointed to a similarly named office that was recently created in New York City, writing: “This model has since become nationally recognized.”

However, New York City’s safety office is structured differently from Minneapolis’ office. It oversees neighborhood safety, domestic violence, hate crimes and community mental health, but not police, fire or 911.

The Minneapolis ordinance to eliminate the Office of Community Safety preserves the Department of Neighborhood Safety, which helps coordinate victim support services, violence intervention programs and trauma resources among others.

The ordinance also eliminates the department of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging but moves its responsibilities to the Neighborhood and Community Relations department.

Whether the city has the Office of Community Safety or not, it is still required to abide by a 2023 court-ordered agreement between the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the city that includes policing reforms like adopting stricter use-of-force practices.

The agreement also requires the city to “fund and adequately resource” a 24/7 behavioral health crisis team.

The ordinance passed with the nine votes necessary to override a mayoral veto.

Ask most punters what summer betting looks like, and they'll say football. Fair enough. This year, the World Cup was the biggest betting event the US has ever seen, and Hard Rock Bet likened it to ten Super Bowls.

But take football off the table, and the summer slate is still rammed. Below, OLBG reveals the five sports that kept betting sites busy, with every figure sourced. Money is shown in U.S. dollars at exchange rates on Oct. 19, 2026, and all data is accurate as of that date.

Of course, none of this indicates who'll win anything. It tells you where the money goes, which isn't the same thing at all.

1. Horse racing — the one that never takes a summer off 

• Hong Kong racing turnover 2025/26: $18.30 billion, up 3.2%
• World Pool (global shared racing pools) 2025: $1.39 billion, across all World Pool races
• Melbourne Cup 2025: A record $172.7 million bet on the race itself, up 16.4%

Racing's flat-cap image hides a serious betting machine, and it broke records again over the past 12 months.

Start in Hong Kong. The Jockey Club took $18.30 billion on racing in the 2025/26 season, up 3.2% on the year before. A record  $4.39 billion of that came from punters overseas betting into Hong Kong's pools, up 8.3%.

That overseas money is where Royal Ascot comes in. Ascot runs on World Pool, the Hong Kong-run system that lets punters on different continents bet into one shared pot. The 2025 meeting took around $201 million through World Pool, 10% up on 2024 and only about 2% short of the 2022 record. Across 2025 as a whole, World Pool turnover on races outside Hong Kong rose 20% to $1.19 billion over 57 race days. There's no full-meeting World Pool figure for Royal Ascot 2026 yet.

Not that 2026 was plain sailing. Coral and Ladbrokes said staking came in a little under expectation, and blamed the World Cup running alongside it. Then 13 winning favorites made it an expensive week for the bookies. Not a week to be a bookmaker.

Down under, the race that stops a nation stopped it harder than ever. A record $72.7 million went on the 2025 Melbourne Cup, beating the 2021 record of $157.6 million, and Cup Day as a whole took a record $267 million. Racing Victoria says the Cup takes more than four times the turnover of any other Australian race. The 2026 renewal isn't run until November, so 2025 is still the latest result (November is stretching the definition of summer, granted, but it's too big to leave out).

2. Baseball — summer's quiet workhorse 

• Missouri, July 2026: MLB took $135.2 million of the $246.8 million total handle, more than half
• Indiana, July 2026: Baseball handle of $66.4 million, 17.3% of the state's $384.2 million
• Legal U.S. reach: 39 U.S. jurisdictions run legal sports betting, around 31 with statewide online betting, as of July 2026

With the NBA and NHL done and the NFL not back yet, baseball carries the American betting calendar through July and August. The 2026 MLB season opened on 25 March with the Giants vs. Yankees, the earliest traditional Opening Day the league has staged, and runs to 162 games before the October World Series.

The state reports show how much of the summer it soaks up. In Missouri, live only since December 2025, baseball was more than half of all July handle (the total amount staked). That's well clear of multi-leg parlays at $79.6 million, and soccer at $36.9 million in a World Cup year. Indiana's July report put baseball at 17.3% of handle, with a big chunk of the month's money going on NFL futures that won't settle until the new year.

It wasn't all one-way traffic for the sportsbooks, mind. Nevada's baseball win in June 2026 came to $17.9 million, down 19.4% on a record June 2025, and the home World Cup pulled casual money towards football through June and July. But a game every day, deep player-prop markets and new wrinkles like the 2026 automated ball-strike challenge system keep baseball the backbone of U.S. summer betting.

3. Cricket — huge, mostly hidden, and hit hard this year 

• India: Cricket estimated at 80%-90% of all sports betting revenue, with participation rising to around 370 million during the IPL
• IPL 2026 (March 28-May 31): Record opening-day betting demand, then seven straight weeks of decline under India's new online gaming ban
• UK: The Hundred's sixth season ran July 21-Aug. 16

No sport changed shape more this year than cricket.

Its betting heartland is India, where the Think Change Forum reckons cricket drives 80%-90% of all sports betting revenue, almost all of it offshore and unregulated. In August 2025, India passed the PROG Act, a blanket ban on real-money online games, and enforcement landed just as IPL 2026 got going.

What followed was a season like no other. Betting demand on the opening match, RCB vs. Sunrisers Hyderabad, was the highest for an IPL opener in nine seasons of Blask tracking. Then it fell for seven weeks straight. Authorities had blocked around 8,400 betting sites and apps before a ball was bowled, and told VPN providers to cut access.

You'll still see big headline numbers for IPL betting floating about. Take them with a pinch of salt. Because almost all of that betting is illegal, they're estimates, not reported figures.

In England, the cricket summer was as busy as ever. India's men played five T20Is and three ODIs between July 1-19, then The Hundred ran from July 21 to Finals Day at Lord's on Aug. 16. The rebranded franchises included defending champions MI London, formerly Oval Invincibles.

4. Tennis — built for betting in-play 

• Wimbledon 2026: June 29-July 12, the 139th Championships
• Operator view: Betway called Wimbledon by far the most important tournament on the tennis calendar for its brand
• Long-cited benchmark: Coral has said roughly a third of a year's tennis turnover comes during the Wimbledon fortnight, an older figure, not updated for 2026

Tennis could have been designed with in-play betting in mind. Momentum swings on grass make live betting especially popular at Wimbledon, and UK bookmakers price up hundreds of markets on the event, from match and set betting to totals.

The 2026 Championships gave in-play punters plenty to work with. The women's draw was blown open early when Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek and Elena Rybakina all went out, reshuffling the outright market mid-tournament. British wildcard Arthur Fery went all the way to the men's semi-finals before Alexander Zverev ended the run.

In the end, though, the favorites largely delivered. World No. 1 Jannik Sinner beat Novak Djokovic in straight sets in the semis, then came from a set down to beat Zverev 6-7, 7-6, 6-3, 6-4 and keep his title, his fifth Grand Slam. The bookmakers' headline offers for the fortnight included retirement-rule guarantees and in-play insurance.

Over in the U.S., prediction-market platforms now list tennis, too, with Grand Slam markets drawing the most volume.

5. Golf — four weeks that matter, and a 200-1 shock 

• Peak event: Entain ranks The Masters its fourth-biggest betting event of the year, behind only the Grand National, the Super Bowl and the Champions League final
• Majors matter: The four majors produce about a third of a year's golf bets, and The Masters alone about 40% of that
• 2026 shock: Ryan Fox won The Open at up to 200-1

Golf doesn't have baseball's daily volume, but the four majors bring a proper betting bonanza, and 2026 was a year for long shots. Rory McIlroy took The Masters, Aaron Rai the PGA Championship and Wyndham Clark the US Open before the final major at Royal Birkdale.

The Masters set the tone in April. At Betway, Bryson DeChambeau drew 16% of all outright bets, more than any other player, while favorite Scottie Scheffler drew 9%.

Then came The Open. New Zealand's Ryan Fox, priced at 200-1 with Caesars and 150-1 to 170-1 elsewhere, equaled the all-time major record with a third-round 62 and birdied the 72nd hole to win. He finished a shot ahead of Cameron Young, with defending champion and favorite Scheffler tied fourth. Fox banked $3.2 million for it, and he was the second huge outsider to win a men's major this year.

That's golf betting in a nutshell. Even the favorite is up against a whole field, and the big prices land just often enough to keep everyone interested.

The bookmakers keep finding new angles, too, such as Entain's "nearest the pin" market on every par three at Augusta.

The betting slip doesn't take a holiday

Summer 2026 showed again that the "quiet season" is a myth. Racing set turnover records in Hong Kong and at Flemington. Baseball carried U.S. sportsbooks through July. Cricket stayed a betting giant even as India's ban hit IPL demand. Tennis lived on in-play action through Wimbledon, and golf served up a 200-1 shock at Royal Birkdale.

The World Cup took the headlines. These five kept punters busy before, during and after it. So next time someone tells you summer is quiet for betting, point them at a racecard, a box score, a scorecard or a leaderboard.

Please gamble responsibly and only bet what you can afford to lose. If gambling stops being fun, free support is available from GamCare and GambleAware.

Methodology

All data is accurate as of Oct. 19, 2026, and comes from the sources listed below, with each figure cited where it appears. This update replaces the previous version's global "share of betting revenue" estimates with event- and regulator-level figures, because no comparable 2026 global breakdown has been published. The old IPL betting estimate and the 2023 cricket market valuation were removed because they couldn't be verified for 2026.

Currency conversion. Figures reported in other currencies were converted to U.S. dollars at these rates for Oct. 19, 2026:

Where a source already gave a U.S. dollar figure (for example, Hong Kong Jockey Club turnover), that figure was used. Converted figures are rounded and will differ slightly from those quoted at the time of each event.

This story was produced by OLBG and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

Federal and state agencies on Thursday carried out “court-authorized investigative activity” at several sites in Rochester and the Twin Cities metro area.

Attorney General Keith Ellison confirmed the office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit executed search warrants Thursday morning at two locations: Iska Inc. in St. Louis Park and Bright Horizon Therapy in Edina. The businesses provide autism services and other Medicaid-funded services, according to the attorney general.

FBI Minneapolis spokesperson Matt Vogel confirmed the Office of Inspector General, IRS criminal investigators and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are also involved in the investigation.

“This is an active investigation, and no further details are available at this time,” Vogel said.

This is an ongoing story. Check back for updates.