Problems with Post Sorting Plugins

I want the ability to sort my posts mostly by category and have been having getting the various sorting plugins to work. My goal is to have three or four posts always remain in order on the first page a viewer sees. The only plugin that I have been able to get to work at all is the Custom Post Order plugin. Unfortunately it only works if I set the options to all categories. When I set the Custom Post Order Options to “apply to selected categories, the sort goes back to the default. The other sort plugins I have tried with no luck area stickypostorderer,list-category-posts and wp-post-sorting.

Any idea as to what is going wrong here?

Thanks in advance for your help – Sam