Best known for her memoir Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest book is a novel, The Signature of All Things. According to her official website, she lives on the Delaware River, in Frenchtown, New Jersey, information I take as an invitation to drop in. But I’ll call first, so there’s food in the house. And to give her a chance to escape across the river to Pennsylvania, like George Washington in reverse.

• PERSON: Rayya Elias, unlikely best friend
• PLACE: Miami, unlikely best beach
• THING: cookbook, At Home on the Range

• RANDY’S PERSON: his longtime doctor