If the documents are part of your content tree, you can use a basic repeater webpart and set the path to the parent of the required documents. Then you can create a display transformation something like:
<li><img src="downloadImg.jpeg" alt="" /><%# Eval("PublicationTitle") %><br /><%# Eval("PublicationDate") %><br /><a href="<%# Eval("PublicationFile") %>") %">Download</a></li>
Use a <ul> and a </ul> in the content before/after of the webpart. Make your path something like /Publications/%(this gets all children of the Publications section).
You can also put you container html is the content before/after.
Does this help?