Use the Take function
int numberOfrecords=10; // read from user
listOfItems.OrderByDescending(x => x.CreatedDate).Take(numberOfrecords)
Assuming listOfItems is List of your entity objects and CreatedDate is a field which has the date created value (used here to do the Order by descending to get recent items).
Take() Function returns a specified number of contiguous elements from the start of a
sequence.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb503062.aspx