Lists of posts and images by category

I am trying to create a list of posts in a particular category and show both a title and thumbnail for each post in that particular category.
I don’t want to show this on every page but ideally would like a plugin that would allow me to choose a particular page to present the list on and choose the relevant category from which the posts will be presented. There is an identical post on this forum http://wordpress.org/support/topic/posts-by-categoru-with-images?replies=4 but the solutions offered there did not help and while the post was resolved it isn’t clear how it was resolved.
Any help will be very much appreciated!