Featured Content Grid

I’m working on a WordPress site, where I’ve customised a theme to suit my needs. I’d like to be able to add a featured content area above the posts section, similar to the featured news grid on Engadget’s header etc.

Here’s an example of how I’d like it to look

I’d really like something similar to the example above.

Are there any free, or relatively cheap plugins which I can use to achieve this?

Thanks