I need an easy to use slider plugin

I need an easy to install and easy to use post slider. I want to feature specific posts or pages (or posts from a category) on my home page in a slider. My blog does not have a lot of images, and I have a lot of content that is added automatically, so I need the plugin to either auto-thumbnail the posts, or simply feature the first X number of words/characters of each post in the slider. I would love it if the plugin used shortcode, as opposed to having to hack the theme index.php page.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I have looked around, but so far nothing seems to fit this description. Any input is appreciated.