-- GETTING HIS KICKS ON 66 Filmmaker Barry Levinson, most fondly remembered for his Baltimore-set films Diner and Tin Men, is turning to a new medium to showcase his talent for dialogue: the novel. Tentatively titled 66, his publishing debut is ''a coming-of-age novel in the vein of his Baltimore movies,'' says Random House Inc. editor at large Peter Gethers, who will release the book next year under the Broadway imprint. The story, about a group of friends coming to grips with Vietnam and the counterculture, ''is understated like his movies,'' adds Gethers, ''but it's very much a novel.''
-- BOW WOW! Before she wrote her own book -- Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports From My Life With Autism -- Temple Grandin was one of the subjects of Oliver Sacks' An Anthropologist on Mars, a collection of case studies on ''differently brained'' people. Now Grandin, who has a Ph.D. in animal science, is putting her different way of thinking to use in Talking to Animals, which attempts to decode animal intelligence and behavior. ''What Oliver Sacks does in describing people like Temple, Temple does [in describing] animal feeling,'' says Grandin's agent, Betsy Lerner, who sold the book to Scribner for $600,000, according to a source.
-- BEAUS ARTS Finding Mr. Right, and figuring out who the Messrs. Wrong are, has been a plot device since before Jane Austen. But journalist Susan Shapiro is putting a new twist on the old formula: She's tracked down her ex-flames to find out why they weren't right -- and why her current husband is. ''Every woman...will recognize one of her ex-boyfriends in these pages,'' says Bantam Dell senior editor Danielle Perez, who acquired The Five Men Who Broke My Heart (tentatively scheduled for next year).
-- HOT STUFF Disco diva Donna Summer has gone from churchgoing Boston girl to five-time Grammy winner to semiprivate citizen, and now she's writing all about it. ''There's more mystery to her life than people realize,'' says Random House exec editor Jonathan Karp, who will publish the book under Villard next year. ''And we know she'll work hard for the money.''
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