How Literature Saved My Life By David Shields (Knopf, $25.95)

A critic and reformed novelist gives an intimate — and very entertaining

— explanation of what he reads and why.

Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora

By Emily Raboteau (Atlantic Monthly, $25)

Unfolding over a decade in Israel, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana, and the American South each part of Raboteau’s journey is chronicled in a section.

Splintered By A.G. Howard (Amulet, $17.95)

Howard’s Goth-infused novel for younger readers, inspired by “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” is in many ways a brilliant debut, in others a disturbing one.