We review a series of crack problems arising in the general deformations of a linearly elastic solid (Mode-I, Mode-II and Mode-III crack) and, perhaps more significantly, when the contribution of surface effects are taken into account. The surface mechanics are incorporated using the continuum based surface/interface model of Gurtin and Murdoch. We show that the deformations of an elastic solid containing a single crack can be decoupled into in-plane (Mode-I and Mode-II crack) and anti-plane (Mode-III crack) parts, even when the surface mechanics is introduced. In particular, it is shown that, in contrast to classical fracture mechanics (where surface effects are neglected), the incorporation of surface elasticity leads to the more accurate description of a finite stress at the crack tip. In addition, the corresponding stress fields exhibit strong dependency on the size of crack.