Jack Nisbet, author of six books and numerous writing awards, will speak and sign books at Darvill’s Bookstore on Thursday, Oct. 28 at 5:30 p.m.

His most recent book, “The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest,” has been a regional best seller for the past year, and won the Pacific Northwest Bookseller’s Association Award for 2010.

One of his previous books, “Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America” won both the Murray Morgan Prize and the Washington Governor’s Award when it was published.

Other works by the Spokane teacher and naturalist include “The Mapmaker’s Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau” (Washington State University Press, 2005), “Visible Bones: Journeys through Time in the Columbia River Country” (Sasquatch Books, 2003), and “Purple Flat Top: In Pursuit of a Place” (Sasquatch Books, 1996).

Scottish naturalist David Douglas worked in the Pacific Northwest some two decades after Lewis and Clark, and was the first European visitor whose sole job was to investigate the natural history of the Northwest. He took the job seriously, traveling throughout the region (racking up 7,032 miles by foot, boat, and horse) collecting 650 species in Oregon alone that were carefully cataloged and sent back to England. These specimens transformed English gardening and landscaping, and his most notable discovery, the Douglas fir, affected many aspects of life in the Northwest.

In talking about his book about Douglas, Nisbet has said: “If you do natural history in the Northwest, you run into David Douglas immediately. There have been other books written about him, every couple of decades, but nobody had looked at Douglas from an inland Northwest perspective. I knew the country, I had worked extensively with the fur trade, and I had a lot of tribal contacts that I thought could inform Douglas’ story.”

Refreshments will be served, and both of Nisbet’s latest books will be available for signing.