How do you place your posts on separate pages?

Hi,

I want to have a home page that has a summary of each post w/a pic from the post beside the summary.

If there are 10 posts in a category then there should be 10 summaries with 10 pics. Ditto for each category, and the categories I want available from the sidebar menu(verticle list of categories).

When a user clicks on the heading of a summary they are taken to the post. In the sidebar there are a list of all articles in the currently selected category.

The problem is, when I make a new post to a category it’s added or appended to my home page, where I want there to be just a summary with a pic.

Is there a way to do this from within wordpress, by using the settings, or does wordpress prevent this from being possible by nature of it’s design?