Theresa Horner

Eddy Cue, the alleged "ringmaster" of a conspiracy to raise e-book prices in 2010, returns to a Manhattan federal court Monday in the final four days of the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Apple (AAPL).

Having sailed through a grilling Thursday by the government's lawyer, the star witness of U.S.A. v. Apple will complete the friendly questioning that Apple's chief counsel began Thursday afternoon.

Among the topics they are expected to cover Monday are a dinner with Macmillan's CEO that the government finds suspicious and a "smoking gun" e-mail from Steve Jobs

Barnes & Noble’s (BKS) two new Android Wi-Fi tablets, the 7-inch Nook HD and 9-inch Nook HD+, aim to compete with other moderately priced tablets such as Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire and Google’s (GOOG) Nexus 7. The Nook tablets, starting at $199 coming available in October, differentiate themselves most from competitors when it comes to some new reading and “discoverability” features.

“We’re Barnes & Noble, and books is one of our main categories,” Theresa Horner, B&N’s vice president of digital content, said at a briefing on Tuesday.

Self-publishing company FastPencil is offering some of its authors who pay for its service a better chance to get their books into Barnes & Noble retail stores and featured on Nook merchandising platforms. FastPencil hopes that the offering will help set it apart from free self-publishing platforms like Amazon’s KDP. “Barnes & Noble is excited to partner with FastPencil to bring quality, independently published books to our readers,” B&N VP digital content Theresa Horner said in a statement. Starting today, authors who use FastPencil’s Premiere and Wavecrest programs will have “full access to online and in-store placement through Barnes &