AVR-Chat

Does anybody have a experience of how to setup, connect and transfer 
data via an AVR162 SPI connected to a MAX3100. 

From the MAX3100 datasheet it looks like there is always a 16 bit word 
transfer between the MAX3100 and the connecting device. On the AVR side 
it supports 8bits only. Can I just transfer two bytes after each other 
to satisfy the 16bit transfer ?

Does anyone no of a code library that supports SPI on the AVR that I 
can use as reference ?

Thanks,

Deon.