Help! Adding featured content thumb gallery to or below header

I’ve been looking everywhere for help with this one item, and no one has responded.

I’d like to make a thumbnail gallery at the top of my home page (ideally it would appear on all pages but doesn’t have to) that looks like the ones on these sites below, with text. Ideally it would be in or below the header or top nav space so it would appear above all posts as well.

gothamist.com
theawl.com
https://gizmodo.com/

I’d like the images to be ones that are associated with featured posts of my choice by date (i’m currently using the Featured posts with thumbs plugin and have a ton of other gallery and thumb plugins plus I’ve enabled the thumbnail functionality in WordPress). Text would be the post title. They should link to individual posts.
Ideally if no image it would just feature the title text as an image in the box OR random choice from a selection of generic images?

I’d like it to go just below the header and the top nav. The theme I’m using does NOT offer a top nav widget space, only two sidebar widgets.

My site is cityrat.com, I’m using evidens white theme from design disease.

If this isn’t possible suppose i could live with some sort of perma-sticky post as the top post.

I’ve been trying to use NextGEN gallery and the aforementioned featured posts and I see how they work but I can’t get them in the header. Ideally I’d like them to have text overlays or some kind of caption. I’d rather use capabilities built into WordPress if possible but plugins are good if it makes it easier.
any assistance would be much appreciated!
michelle