What are the prerequisites to handling these books? Would they be good for someone who never took Bio in college or even AP Bio in high school? Or would some remedial work be needed first?
They are self-contained. [1] discusses very little biology, it is mostly about biological sequences as formal languages. [2] is meant as an introduction to biology. [3] is self-contained, but to appreciate its content probably it would help to skim through Molecular Biology of the Gene by Watson et al.
I can recommend 3 really good books, SICP-level good:
1. Biological Sequence Analysis by Durbin et al.
How to model DNA, RNA and proteins as probabilistic languages / generative models. There is also a companion book with all exercises solved.
2. Physical Biology of the Cell by Phillips et al.
A massive amount of quantitative cell biology models that use simple undergrad physics.
Originated from a Caltech course. After reading this book, all other intro to biology books look like a bag of tricks.
3. An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits by Alon.
Bacterial circuits from the perspective of an electrical engineer.
Sadly, NSF discontinued funding for a totally epic Cold Spring Harbor Summer school for postdocs that taught [2,3].
A shame, we need more quantitative biology and less bags of tricks.