Showing 10 recent (same month/year?) items from a category (Wordpress)

Question

I'd like to display 10 recent posts (probably from the current month or year) from the "featured" category in random order, i.e, rotate posts on each refresh/pageload.

I'd like to show small thumbnails (the same image(s) used in the posts just resized to fit) on left, and excerpt on right. So the formatting would look like:

[#1 Post Title]
[80x80 thumbnail] [excerpt, limit to x chars]

[#2 Post Title]
[80x80 thumbnail] [excerpt, limit to x chars]

[#3 Post Title]
[80x80 thumbnail] [excerpt, limit to x chars]

... upto 10 posts

Many thanks

Answer 1

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function%5FReference/WP%5FQuery

Answer 2

Many plugins do random WordPress › WordPress Plugins >> Search "Random Posts". If they don't also do thumbnails, shouldn't be to hard to add a custom field to the query for the thumbnail.

Answer 3

Just what I wanted: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/thumbnail-for-excerpts/