how to highlight the selected Item of Recycler View?

You can use a StateListDrawable to achieve the desired effect.

Example

Create a new Drawable resource file in your drawable directory with the following content:

selector_row.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <!-- Color when the row is selected -->
    <item android:drawable="@android:color/darker_gray" android:state_pressed="false" android:state_selected="true" />
    <!-- Standard background color -->
    <item android:drawable="@android:color/white" android:state_selected="false" />
</selector>

Now simply use this StateListDrawable as the background in the row-layout of your RecyclerView

row_recyclerview.xml

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:background="@drawable/selector_row">

    <!-- row content -->

</RelativeLayout>

Now as soon as the onClick() method in your adapter is called you simply need to do the following:

// myBackground is the RelativeLayout root of your row
myBackground.setSelected(true);

The rows’ background will have the color (in this case darker_gray) as long as you call myBackground.setSelected(false). Of course you should create a SparseBooleanArray for example in order to know which row is selected and which isn’t since the rows will be reused when scrolling.

Edit: Remember selected items
The idea behind the SparseBooleanArray is to remember the items which are selected. Following a sample on how to use it:

public class MyImageAdapter extends RecyclerView.Adapter<MyImageAdapter.MyViewHolder> {

    private SparseBooleanArray selectedItems;

    // Other stuff [...]

    @Override
    public void onBindViewHolder(MyViewHolder holder, int position) {
        // Set the selected state of the row depending on the position
        holder.myBackground.setSelected(selectedItems.get(position, false));
    }

    public class MyViewHolder extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder implements View.OnClickListener{

        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) {
              // Save the selected positions to the SparseBooleanArray 
              if (selectedItems.get(getAdapterPosition(), false)) {
                  selectedItems.delete(getAdapterPosition());
                  myBackground.setSelected(false);
              }
              else {
                  selectedItems.put(getAdapterPosition(), true);
                  myBackground.setSelected(true);
              }
        }
    }
}