So instead of the heavy theory, I'd like to see the stuff that made people scratch their heads in the first place.
Rutherford [1] showed that atoms consist of a tiny, positively charged nucleus and rather large negatively charged shell. It was hypothesized that electrons are flying around the nucleus like planets around the sun. But we already knew at that point that moving charges emit radiation, which causes the electron to lose energy and move closer to the nucleus. So it should pretty much immediately collapse into a point. Bohr then showed that if you assume that only certain orbits were allowed, it works out pretty nicely. Nowadays we now that there is such a thing as a ground state, meaning the lowest amount of energy the electron can possibly have around a nucleus is enough to keep it moving.
The idea for quantizing things came from observing the black body spectrum. If you sum up all contributions classically, you get infinity. Planck tried to see what happens if you assume that energy comes in little packets instead of a continuous spectrum. He didn't have any justification for it, but it matched the observations pretty well.
This is more up to date and specifically on challenges to the SM. Where is physics going? | Sabine Hossenfelder, Bjørn Ekeberg and Sam Henry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8npmtsfsTU&t=2306s
As a sibling poster commented, the blackbody spectrum was also inexplicable from a classical point of view (see https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_41.html Section 41-2), but I think that the specific-heat problem was known before the blackbody problem.
Theoretical Concepts in Physics by Malcolm Longair is a mix of history and physics, by explaining how physicists came to discover their theories. I actually don't think it says much about modern particle physics though. It includes quantum mechanics.
Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffiths if you just want particle physics. Griffiths also has an intro book on quantum mechanics.
Anyway, the books you proposed look interesting, thanks.