Halbert could no longer endure to look upon this quiet scene, but, starting up, dashed his book from him, and exclaimed aloud: "To the fiend I bequeath all books, and the dreamers that make them!..." -from The Monastery They were the literary phenomenon of their time: The Waverly novels, 48 volumes set in fanciful re-creations of the Scottish Highlands (and other lands) of centuries past, published between 1814 and 1831 and devoured by a reading public hungry for these sweeping, interconnected melodramas. The series popularized historical fiction, though they're also abundant in astute political and social commentary. The Monastery, Volume 18 of Waverly, is a delightfully humorous and surprisingly supernatural tale of theological and family conflict during the