I'll give it a shot, Peter...
We're currently waiting on an update to the articles module we offer, which will hopefully allow for the customisation of the actual article page. Until then, your other requirements are easy enough to meet...
1) Navigate to the relevant page on your site
2) Insert an Articles module in your main content pane
3) Under the dropdown menu for the module, you should see an "Add new article" option. Select this to add each article.
4) Under the module settings, you can select how many article headers/blurbs etc are displayed on the page, and the templates for this module. For example, if you wanted to display the title and a short blurb for each article, possibly with an image and a "read more" link, you would choose the default template.
5) When each article is added, you are first given a description text area. Place your blurb/introduction here. Under "detail type" click "Text/HTML", and a second text area will appear. Enter the body/remainder of your article here, including any further images.
At this stage, the article will be displayed on a dynamic page when a user clicks "read more". This means that other content cannot currently be added to the displayed article, as mentioned above.
Once you have an article or ten in your module, you can then display latest headings etc anywhere on your site with a little practice.
Just insert another articles module on, say, the home page, then change its settings as follows:
Tick "display site-wide articles" and choose "title only " as the template, and you should be in business. You will also see options to display only the most recent 5 articles, or articles within a certain date range.
If you'd like to further specify which articles appear on the home page, you can assign categories to each article, then filter by category in any instance of the module. You can create categories by inserting the "categories" module on a page (making it visible to page editors only) and then adding categories as required.
Hope that's clear enough,
Peter