Speaking of which I would advise : Svante Pääbo
Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes then even better imho The Naked Neanderthal by Ludovic Slimak. After these books I spent many hours listening to the full courses of Jean-Jacques Hublin, chaire Paléoanthropologie in college de France ( in french but probably translatable now with automatic features ?). This was an unexpected and wonderful path.