is there a plugin substitutes images for posts; links to post?

I’m looking for a plugin that allows you to assign an image to a post that represents the post in a sidebar “recent posts” list with the images linked to the post.

So you get a list of images each one linked to the post in the sidebar.

I’ve looked high and low and haven’t found anything. (I came close with the category-images.php plugin). If it doesn’t exist, any php gurus want to take a crack at it? Sounds simple enough to my ears but I’m terrible at code.