Get any modern undergraduate Intro Biology textbook like Campbell. These are fantastic books: beautifully illustrated and clearly written, and way better than popular science books at the mall bookstore.

The first few Units cover all the basics: chemistry of life and energy, molecular biology, cell biology, and genetics. From there you can branch out into anything.

The research into the origen of life looks at bottom up fundamentals (how they work) of all cells since the solar system was formed. You could start with the slides in this lecture and read the underlying papers and all the references in all those papers. You probably can find these references also in all the books he wrote. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBiIDwBOqQA

Maybe an educational text for the laymen has summarised this recently but I'm not aware of one. Most Biology from your school days have been rewritten.

I will have to re-read Molecular Biology of the Cell, 7th Edition, 2022. I read the 3th edition and it has changed dramatically since.

You can download it on Anna's Archive or order it at the usual suspects https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Molecular+Biology+of+the+Cell%2C+...

I can recommend "The song of the cell" as a starting point. If you prefer textbooks, maybe "Life: The Science of Biology". I have a translated non-english copy and besides some math issues it's a nice overview, but I'm not a biologist.