load recent nodes with node_load()
Using only node_load() you cannot get a list of the most recent nodes, as node_load() returns a single node object for the node that matches some criteria; it's not a function that returns a list of nodes.

The faster, but a little inefficient, way to get a list of more recent nodes is to:


Get the list of node IDs associated with the most recent nodes
Call node_load() for each of the node IDs obtained from the first step


You could use code similar to the following one.

   $nodes = array();
   $result = db_query_range("SELECT n.nid FROM {node} n ORDER BY n.created DESC", array(), 0, $number_of_posts);

   while ($nid = db_result($result)) {
     $nodes[] = node_load($nid);
   }


After that code is executes, $nodes will contains the $number_of_poststh recent nodes.