Help with adding a recent post section

Hi, i was hoping to get some help with a problem i am having.

I have recently installed and customized a theme. However i am looking to add a recent posts section to the front of my site. I would like this to pull in recently added posts, show a short description, a thumbnail, and a read more link. It would be nice if it showed the 5 newest posts. Does anyone know any php that would do this? Or how i would go about doing this
Thank you