Carousel help

I am trying to have a nice slide for the top of my page where users can click on text and be brought to a certain page. I tried the carousel but cannot tell it where I want it to go when someone clicks on it and the viewer is HUGE with small thumbnails in it and pushes all my text way below the page..Is there a step by step I can follow to install a nice slider that can dissolve between pics adn have a link in it for each pic to bring people to certain pages? Im lost..help!