This issue of our journal is a continuation in theme and approach of the previous issue; with these two issues of selected papers, we aim to provide insight into the cognitive study of the role of negative emotions (in particular: fear and disgust) in the reading of fiction. The authors explore fear and disgust as linguistically, theatrically, and visually mediated aversive stimuli, as extremes of aesthetic experience, and as modes of reception. The authors continue their exploration of fear as emotions experienced by readers by  presenting age-specific encounters with fear and anxiety through  children's and young adult literature. By doing so, they provide insight into the diverse literary representations of disgust, assessing the existence of the so-called “core disgust” as a fundamental emotion and the role of moral disgust in the analysis of literary works. The essays in this selection aim to draw attention to the contradictory aesthetic experiences of reception and the complex cognitive processing processes closely related to them, characterized by perceptual resistance, tension, high-level reflection, and intense activity of attentional and memory processes.